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A BIOGRAPHY 



OF 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 



WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE PHYSICAL 

AND PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA WHICH HAVE OCCURRED IN THEIR 

PRESENCE; IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 



BY 



T. L. NICHOLS, M.D. 



AUTHOR OF 'FORTY TEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE ETC. 





LONDON : 

SAUNDEKS, OTLEY, AND CO. 

GG BROOK STREET, W. 

18 64. 

[All rights reserved.'] 



3>* 



« 



LONDON 

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 

NEW-STREET SQUARE 



CONTENTS. 

♦ 

CHAPTER I. 

AN INTRODUCTION. 

The Motive and Method of this Book — The Possible and 
the Actual — Facts and Theories . . . Page 1 

CHAPTER II. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 

Born where, when, and of whom — Family Characteristics 
— Monitions and Prevision — Childhood — Startling Mani- 
festations — Boyish Occupation .... 8 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE MANIFESTATIONS. 

The Rochester Knockings — First Seance of the Davenport 
Family — Great Excitement — The Pistol-flash and 
Spectre — Sharpshooting in the Dark — Floating in the 
Air — Analogies and Explanat'cns . . *, 13 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

ASTOUNDING PHENOMENA. 

Excitement and Persecution — Dance of Breakfast Dishes — 
A gigantic Apparition — An invisible Scribe — An asto- 
nished Furniture Dealer — A Self- writing Pencil. Page 23 

CHAPTER V. 

ORGANISATION OF REGULAR STANCES. 

An Apology or Explanation — Marvellous Manifestations — 
Tests applied— Boys floating in the Air — A striking 
Test— March of the Family Crockery — Upheld by a 
Spectre — A Balancing Feat — ' George Brown ' — A 
Murdered Man's Story — A Boy carried off by a 
Ghost . 31 

CHAPTER VI. 

'we fly by night.' 

Hands and Voices — Advent of 'John King' — Required to 
leave Buffalo — Refusal and the Consequences — A mys- 
terious Night Trip of sixty Miles — Manifestations in 
Mayville — Another Ghost and Murder . . 45 

CHAPTER VII. 

STRIKING TESTS AT BUFFALO. 

Keeping to the Facts— S. B. Brittain's Experience — Visit of 
Rev. B. F. Barrett— Statement of Stephen Albro and 
Mrs. Taylor— Most surprising Wonders . . 55 



CONTENTS. V 

CHAPTER VIII. 

TELE BKOTHEES DAVENPORT ON THEIE TRAVELS. 

Beginning of the Binding Tests— Judge Paine's ingenious 
Experiments — Thread and Sealing Wax — Sewed up in 
Sacks — Invincible Incredulity — Tobacco Test at Cleve- 
land — Betting and Sailors' Tests at Toledo — \ German 
Philosopher at Ann Arbor — Tarred Hope and Waxed 
Ends at Rochester — A Series of Trials . Page 69 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE CAMBRIDGE PROFESSORS. 

' Old Harvard ' — Scientific Incredulity — A University 
Commission — The Fox Girls — The Brothers examined 
— Plenty of Rope — Prof. Pierce in the Cabinet — Phos- 
phorus — What came of it 83 

CHAPTER X. 

AMONG THE DOWK-E ASTERS. 

Lola Montes — A Row in a Garret — A Storm of Feathers 
— A Scene at Portland — A Mad-house Test — Boxed up 
at Bangor — A Discomfited Darling — Seeing is not always 
Believing 

CHAPTER XI. 

MORE WONDERS IN MAINE. 

A Riot and a Fight — ' Capt. Henry Morgan the Buccaneer' 
— Mr. Rand's Story — The Escritoire unlocked — Mrs. 
Rand's Testimony 109 



VI 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER XII, 

MORE PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES. 

A Bravo in the Cabinet — Jugglers and Conjurors — Domestic 
Manifestations — The necessary Conditions — Tables set 
by Invisibles — They eat Food like Mortals — Remarkable 
Testimony Page 121 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE IMPRISONMENT IN OSWEGO. 

Mr. Rand and his Testimonies — Strong Tests at Oswego — 
Prosecution and Imprisonment — An astonished Jailer 
— The Prison Door unlocked without visible Hands — 
Declaration and Affidavit 135 



; 



CHAPTER XIV. 

TO THE MISSISSIPPI AND BACK TO THE ATLANTIC. 

Fastening a Committee — Sewed in Sacks — Social Science 
Congress in Michigan — Beating the Telegraph at 
Chicago — Bombardment of Fort Sumter — Dark Lan- 
thorns in the Dark Circle — A Fight with a Spectre — A 
Confederate discovered — Washington — Baltimore — Riots 
and Prosecutions 15G 

CHAPTER XV. 

AT THE NEW YORK COOPER INSTITUTE. 

Immense Audiences — Report of the ' New York Herald ' — 
Report of 'The World' — Another Scene from the 'Herald' 
—A Sporting Circle — Mayor and Aldermen — A Seance 
in Brooklyn — Testimony of Mr. Tice . . .173 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTER XVI. 

VISIT TO ENGLAND. 

Character of the English — Past and Present Beliefs — The 
Mission of the Brothers Davenport — Their Confederates 
— The first Seance in London — The Press in a Difficulty, 
and how they got out of it— Report of the 'Morning 
Post'— 'The Times'— ' The Herald' . . Page 205 

CHAPTER XVII. 

' STILL THE WONDER GREW.' 

Private Seances — Report of 'Master of Arts' in 'Daily 
Telegraph ' — ' The Morning Star ' — A London Minister, 
— The ' Morning Post ' — Tests that ought to be satis- 
factory 237 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

IMPORTANT SEANCE. 

Nobility, Savans, and Men of Letters — Second Seance at 
Mr. Boucicault's — An admirable Description — Needless 
Disclaimers — The true philosophical Method . 258 

CHAPTER XIX. 

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM. 

The Press in opposition — Ugly Trash for Bedlam — Common 
Conjuring — Fantastic Tricks and Farthing Candles — 
Miserable Trifling — Grotesquely absurd and stupidly 
meaningless — Reverend Dobbs — Tedious, dull and vulgar 
— The Secret not worth knowing — Human Nature and 
an awful Warning * . 275 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XX. 



A PERSONAL, STATEMENT. 



What I think of the Brothers Davenport, and what I saw at 
a Seance at the Hanover-square Rooms . Page 287 

CHAPTER XXI. 

' AND THE MAGICIANS DID SO WITH THEIR ENCHANTMENTS.' 

The ' Professors ' Excited — Duty to Expose Imposture — 
Professor Anderson — Mr. Tolmaque — Challenges 
quibbled out of — The Magicians resort to Tricks — Rope- 
tying in demand — A Ten Years' Contest — Testimony of 
an Amateur 301 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE TESTIMONY OF MR. FERGUSON. 

Six Months with the Brothers Davenport — Seance in a 
Railway Tunnel — Convincing Manifestations — Personal 
Explanations 317 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

MORE FACTS AND EVIDENCE. 



/ 






Mr. Coleman's Statement — He talks with ' John King,' 
and sees Divers Marvels — Astounding Phenomena- — Mr. 
Howitt's Testimony — Facts and Tests — Genius and 
Science nonplussed 338 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

WHO AND WHY. 

By whom are the Manifestations produced, and for what 
purpose — Examination of Evidence — Conclusion . 350 



A BIOGRAPHY 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 



CHAPTER I. 

AN INTRODUCTION. 

The Motive and Method of this Booh — The Possible and the 
Actual — Facts and Theories. 

It is my purpose, in the following pages, to 
give as clear, full, and truthful a narrative 
of the lives of the two young Americans, 
known to the world as the Brothers 
Davenport, and of the remarkable physical 
and psychical phenomena which have for 
eleven years been witnessed, in their pre- 
sence, by multitudes of people, as I am able 

B 



2 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

to write. The account is substantially 
taken from the lips of the two brothers, 
especially from those of Mr. Ira E. 
Davenport, the eldest brother, whose story 
of the experience of his whole life has, in 
my judgment, every mark of simple truth- 
fulness. His account is confirmed by the 
reports of American newspapers in sixteen 
States which they have visited, by several 
pamphlets and biographical sketches, and 
by the testimony of various persons, both 
Englishmen and Americans, who have been 
witnesses of the extraordinary manifesta- 
tions with which they have been accom- 
panied and some of whose testimonies will 
be found in the following pages. 

In writing this narrative, I do little more 
than to set down in order what has been 
told me by those in whose veracity I place 
entire confidence, and reduce to a moderate 
compass the testimony of ' a cloud of wit- 
nesses.' I wish to present the facts con- 



THE BROTHEKS DAVENPORT. 6 

nected with these young men, separated, as 
far as possible, from any theory held by 
themselves or others in regard to them. 
The reader will be left, as he must and 
ought to be, to draw his own conclusions. 
I have no interest to deceive any one, or to 
distort or exaggerate a single fact in the 
narrative. It will be admitted that these 
facts are sufficiently wonderful without the 
least exaggeration. From first to last they 
seem, to those who have only observed the 
ordinary occurrences of life, incredible. 
The word is not strong enough. They are 
what most people will consider impossible. 
To a similar objection to an extraordinary 
fact, some one has replied, ' I did not say it 
was possible ; I only said it was true.' 

It is not well, however, to be hasty 
in asserting that anything is impossible. 
Many things, once deemed impossible, are 
now matters of daily observation. It is 
not long since millions of people would 

B 2 



4 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

have considered crossing the ocean by 
steam, travelling eighty miles an hour on 
a railway, and sending messages by elec- 
tricity, physical impossibilities. The first 
photographs were great marvels. Many 
facts in geology, natural history, and 
physiology, are marvellous and inexplicable, 
or unexplained. It is not known how a 
broken bone is repaired, or blood sent to a 
limb deprived of the use of its large arteries. 
We are all accustomed to many things 
which, but for their being common, would 
seem marvellous, and be thought impos- 
sible. At the same time, I do not pretend 
for a moment that the cases I have men- 
tioned are parallel to this of the pheno- 
mena produced in presence of the Brothers 
Davenport. I wish to say only that the 
first question in regard to phenomena is 
not one of probability, or even of what is 
called possibility, but always a question of 
fact It is not, is it likely ; but is it true ? 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 

If, in describing these phenomena, I do 
not attempt to account for them, and offer 
no theory in regard to them, it would be 
a mere affectation for me to ignore the 
theories held by others. These are two 
in number only. 

The first is, that the Davenports are 
simply magicians, or prestidigitators, like 
Houdin, Anderson, and many others, who 
by their own skill and the aid of confede- 
rates produce their manifestations ; and that 
they are impostors and knaves in solemnly 
denying that they use any such means, or 
any means whatever, to produce them. 

The second theory is, that the manifesta- 
tions are genuine, and effected by the aid 
of some usually invisible intelligences, sup- 
posed by some to be demons, and by others 
the spirits of human beings who have de- 
parted from this life. 

Besides these, there have been vague 
suggestions of unknown elements, electrical 



b A BIOGRAPHY OF 

action, odic forces, and hidden powers ap- 
pertaining to the human organism, which 
may be unconsciously exercised. These are 
vague suggestions, and have not the con- 
sistency of developed theories, and are 
unsupported by any basis of observation 
or experiment. I mention them now only 
that the reader, in perusing the statement 
of facts, may try, if he wishes to do so, 
to account for them upon any hypothesis 
he may prefer. I shall revert again to 
these theories ; but it will be evident to 
every one that the great question first of 
all to be settled is, whether the manifesta- 
tions are what they are represented to be — 
that is, produced by some power other 
than the Davenports and their associates ; 
or, whether the Davenports are impostors 
who have for eleven years been deceiving 
vast multitudes, and all this time liable 
to punishment, and worthy of punishment 
and execration, as the meanest, basest — 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 7 

the most audacious and most atrocious, of 
cheats and humbugs. 

The Brothers Davenport, from the ages 
of twelve and fourteen to the present time, 
have stood before the world charged by 
multitudes with this imposture. They 
have been brought to public trial many 
hundreds of times, and in the presence of 
hundreds of thousands of people ; and the 
charge of collusion, trick, or deception of 
any kind has never been proved against 
them. 

What has happened in this long scene 
of trials and triumphs will be found in the 
following chapters, which will be read with 
interest, I am certain, and I hope also with 
candour and profit. 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



CHAPTER II. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 

Born, where, when, and of whom — Family Characteristics — 
Monitions and Prevision — Childhood — Startling Mani- 
festations — Boyish Occupation. 

IraErastus Davenport and William Henry 
Davenport, who are known as the Brothers 
Davenport, were born in Buffalo, State of 
New York, United States of America ; the 
former September 17, 1839, the latter Feb- 
ruary 1, 1841. Their only sister, Elizabeth 
Louisa Davenport, was born December 23, 
1844. 

Ira Davenport, the father, was born at 
Skeneatales, New York, in 1816. He is 
descended from early English settlers in 
America. His wife, Virtue Honeysett, was 
born in the county of Kent, England, in 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. V 

1819, and was taken to America in her 
childhood. 

Buffalo, the residence of the Davenports, 
situated at the outlet of Lake Erie by the 
Niagara River, and twenty miles south of 
the famous cataract, was, at the period of 
the birth of the Brothers Davenport, an 
enterprising city of some twenty thousand 
inhabitants, and has since increased to a 
population of more than a hundred thou- 
sand. Mr. Davenport, senior, had a place 
under the city government, in the depart- 
ment of police ; and though in moderate 
circumstances, was widely known, and ap- 
pears to have deserved and enjoyed the 
confidence of his fellow-citizens. His wife's 
father and other relations resided at May- 
ville, in Chautauque County, about sixty 
miles south-west of Buffalo. I mention 
this circumstance for a reason that will 
appear in the course of the narrative. 
I find nothing in the characters of the 



10 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

progenitors of the Davenports which would 
account for the extraordinary phenomena 
which have occurred for eleven years past 
in the presence of the subjects of this bio- 
graphy, by the laws of hereditary descent. 
It is related, indeed, that in the families of 
both father and mother had been observed 
many of those events which are considered 
supernatural by some persons, and imagina- 
tions and coincidences by others, and which 
are both common and inexplicable. Thus 
Mrs. Davenport, while a girl, heard, or 
imagined she heard, one day, a voice direct- 
ing her to observe the time as marked upon 
a clock standing near her, which proved to 
be the moment of her mother's death at 
a distance. The female relations of Mr. 
Davenport are said to have possessed ex- 
traordinary gifts of healing, similar to 
those formerly attributed to the sovereigns 
of England, and something of the second- 
sight, or prevision, which many believe to 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 11 

have formerly been common in Scotland. 
I mention these matters, not as attaching 
weight to them, but because they are among 
the family traditions. It is proper to say, 
however, that Mr. Ira Davenport, senior, 
in early life, had minute and circumstan- 
tial previsions of events, places, persons, 
and many of the circumstances of his future 
life ; but this is not, I suspect, so uncommon 
an experience as many persons imagine. 

During the childhood of the Brothers 
Davenport but few events occurred worthy 
of recital. Ira remembers, when very 
young, that his mother was alarmed by 
loud knockings in the house, that she called 
in a neighbour, and that they pursued 
from room to room, and were followed by 
knockings which they did not know how to 
question, and which soon subsided. These 
disturbances were coincident with a severe, 
and as it seemed dangerous illness of Mr. 
Davenport, then absent on a journey. 



12 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

In 1846 the family was disturbed by 
what they described as c raps, thumps, loud 
noises, snaps, cracking noises, in the dead 
of the night/ They were startling and 
annoying, but what could they do ? Dis- 
connected from the subsequent events, they 
were scarcely worthy of remembrance. 

The two boys, born so near each other, 
had, and still have, a striking resemblance 
to each other. They are somewhat below the 
medium size, and have a strongly marked 
and handsome physiognomy, more English, 
perhaps, than American. They received 
the common school education free to every 
boy in America, and are, I think, in thought 
and conversation rather above the average 
of young men brought up in similar con- 
ditions. Their earliest and only employ- 
ment, by which they assisted their parents 
in their boyhood, was in the delivery of 
newspapers from one of the several news- 
paper offices in Buffalo. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 13 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BEGINNING OF THE MANIFESTATIONS. 

The Rochester Knockings — First Seance of the Davenport 
Family — Great Excitement — The Pistol-flash and 
Spectre — Sharpshooting in the Dark — Floating in the 
Air — Analogies and Explanations. 

About the year 1850 the western part of 
New York was greatly excited by accounts 
of what were called the Rochester Knock- 
ings. Rochester is a city of New York 
somewhat less in size than Buffalo, and dis- 
tant some ninety miles, on the borders of 
Lake Ontario. The knockings occurred in a 
family of a mother and three daughters, who 
became known as the Fox Girls. Their fur- 
niture was shaken, doors violently opened and 
shut, drawers opened, articles thrown about, 
and finally questions were answered and 
messages spelled out by raps or detonations, 



14 .A BIOGRAPHY OF 

which appeared to be made on or in the 
tables, floors, doors, and similar objects. 

Naturally, these strange occurrences were 
noised abroad, published in the newspapers, 
and became a subject of general conversa- 
tion. Mr. Davenport was a sturdy un- 
believer in the rappings ; but the marvels 
were talked about in the family, and one 
evening Miss Elizabeth, then ten years old, 
declared her belief that if such things hap- 
pened to* anybody, they might just as well 
happen to them. Whether this was childish 
bravado, or the result of some internal con- 
viction, it is needless to enquire. The re- 
sult was that in the evening the father, 
mother, and three children solemnly seated 
themselves round a table, placed their hands 
upon it, as they had read was done at 
Kochester, and waited further developments. 

After a few moments a movement as of 
swelling or bulging was felt in the table ; 
then crackling noises, tippings, raps, and 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 15 

finally very loud and violent noises. At 
first Mr. Davenport suspected the children 
were i having a lark,' but when the noises 
came to be quite beyond their power to 
make, and messages were spelled out beyond 
their power to manufacture — for the oldest 
boy was now only in his fifteenth year — 
he was convinced that whatever the agency 
might be, it was no deception practised by 
any member of his family. It is easy to 
conceive that their first experiences were of 
absorbing interest. They sat around the 
table from seven o'clock in the evening until 
daylight next morning. 

They had prudently agreed to keep the 
matter a profound secret, not wishing to 
incur obloquy or ridicule ; but Mr. Daven- 
port's mind was too full of the matter, and, 
under an injunction of secrecy, he told a 
friend, who told it to another. Of course it 
spread like wildfire. * Knockings at the 
Davenports' ! ' Hundreds flocked to the 



16 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

house. It was not only filled but sur- 
rounded. The yard and even the street were 
full. The thumpings, knockings, messages, 
and so on, were repeated. On the third even- 
ing, editors, lawyers, preachers, bankers, 
merchants, all classes of people, crowded 
the house ; and amid the manifestations 
such as had been previously given, Master 
Ira was taken with a violent propensity to 
write, his hand becoming subject to extra- 
ordinary gyrations. An eifort was made 
by several strong men to hold his hands, 
but without success. On being furnished 
with paper and a pencil, he wrote with 
extraordinary rapidity a series of brief 
messages, which he distributed to various 
persons in the company. These messages 
were believed to be quite beyond either his 
mental or physical powers, and contained 
matters known only to the persons to whom 
they were addressed, and quite beyond his 
possible knowledge. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 17 

On the fifth evening there was witnessed 
a new and surprising, or perhaps I should 
say more surprising, manifestation. In 
compliance with a direction rapped out on 
the table, by the now familiar method of 
calling over the alphabet and having each 
letter designated, a pistol was procured, 
and capped, but not loaded. One of the 
boys was then directed to go to a vacant 
corner of the room and fire it. At the 
instant that he fired, the pistol was taken 
from his hand, and by its flash was plainly 
seen by every person in the room held by a 
human figure, looking smilingly at the com- 
pany. The light and the form vanished 
together, as when we see a landscape in a 
flash of lightning, and the pistol fell upon 
the floor. It was a very impressive scene, 
and, if so explained, a striking optical illu- 
sion — if a whole company can be supposed 
to be affected by an illusion ; while, if a 
deception, it was remarkably well managed, 
c 



18 A BIOGRAPHY OE 

and might put the patent for Professor 
Pepper's ghosts in peril. 

Among the pistol experiments at Buffalo, 
somewhat later was one which may be of 
interest to sportsmen and the rifle volun- 
teers. Visitors brought their own loaded 
pistols, which were laid upon the table. A 
mark was placed upon the wall at the oppo- 
site extremity of the room. The light was 
then blown out, leaving the room in per- 
fect darkness. In this darkness the pistol, 
untouched by any one present, would be 
fired. Often a spectral figure was seen or 
imagined in the flash of the pistol. But 
the mark was always hit. Sometimes the 
ball cut out the designated spot in a play- 
ing card, sometimes it passed through the 
core of an apple. These tests were so com- 
mon that there must be hundreds of wit- 
nesses to testify to their reality. 

On the next night the manifestations 
were varied again, the house being as 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 19 

crowded as ever ; and neither the idea of 
illusion or delusion seems to account satis- 
factorily for the phenomena witnessed by 
credible people, who were probably as much 
in their senses as people can be expected to 
be under such circumstances. A request 
was made by means of the rappings that 
the room should be partially darkened. It 
is, perhaps, useless to ask why. In Nature 
and in Art some operations require light, 
and some its absence. Most flowers bloom 
by day — some open only in the night. But 
I have only to relate what happened on this 
memorable evening. 

The boy Ira was seated at the table, by 
the side of his father, and scarcely had the 
light been dimmed when he was taken from 
his side by some resistless force, laid upon 
the table, and floated in the air over the 
heads of all the people, and from one end of 
the room to the other, at a height of nine 
feet from the floor, every person in the 
c 2 



20 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

room having the opportunity of feeling him 
as he floated in the air above them. While 
they were watching this marvel, some one 
cried, l William is flying, too ! ' and the two 
brothers were found to be alike defying the 
laws of gravitation, or upborne by some 
force, the nature of which we need not stop 
to enquire. Stranger still — if one such fact 
can be stranger than another, or if one 
more adds to the marvel — the little sister 
joined her two brothers in the air, and all 
three floated about over the heads of the 
people. 

I am aware that natural philosophers may 
give an explanation of this phenomenon, 
or, what answers often for an explanation, 
an analogy ; if, indeed, it may not be con- 
sidered less troublesome to deny the fact. 
It may be said that showers of fishes, frogs, 
&c, which must have been for days sus- 
tained in high regions of the atmosphere, 
prove that there are forces in nature which 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 21 

overcome or suspend gravitation, and that 
the three Davenport children may have 
been sustained and floated about in the air 
in the same manner. I freely admit the 
force of the suggestion. The believers in 
animal magnetism will contend that they 
were borne up and kept up by the united 
and excited will-power of the assembly. 
This is also an hypothesis of some plausi- 
bility ; but, as I have said before, my busi- 
ness is with the facts rather than with 
possible or impossible reasons. 

The facts which I have narrated became 
known to all Buffalo, and the region round 
about. They were witnessed by hundreds 
of as respectable people as live anywhere. 
There are many persons still living there 
— for these events occurred scarcely eleven 
years ago — who could testify to every fact I 
have here given. There was very ocular evi- 
dence of the force with which Ira was raised 
up into the air, by a repulsion perhaps as 



22 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

strong as the usual attraction which brings 
us down, for his head bulged through the 
plaister of the ceiling. At another time, 
and in the full sight of many persons, Ira 
was carried through the air, not only about 
the room, but through the hall, across the 
yard, and landed beyond a fence in the 
street, a distance, by measurement, of 
seventy feet.* 



* I ought, perhaps, to say that this phenomenon 
of levitation is not peculiar to the Davenports, nor to 
this age. It has been witnessed in this country, in 
the case of Mr. Home, and is related of many persons 
in the last eight hundred years. Any industrious 
reader in the library of the British Museum will be 
able to find a multitude of well-authenticated cases, 
some of which have been judicially examined and 
proven by a host of witnesses. It may be doubted, 
however, if they can find, in any of the numerous 
cases, any philosophical explanation of the pheno- 
menon. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 23 



CHAPTER IV. 

ASTOUNDING PHENOMENA. 

Excitement and Persecution — Dance of Breakfast Dishes — 
A gigantic Apparition — An Invisible Scribe — An as- 
tonished Furniture Dealer — A Self-icriting Pencil. 

I am unable to give the particulars of many 
wonderful occurrences of this early period, 
because there were so many, and because 
the memory of many of them has been 
obscured by the events of more than ten 
years. I give those which, from some pecu- 
liar feature, were recorded at the time or 
have been best remembered. 

It cannot be supposed that the excite- 
ment caused by events of so remarkable a 
character, witnessed by so many persons, 
was entirely of an agreeable character. 
Neither the probity of the father, the blame- 



24 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Jess character of the mother, nor the inno- 
cence of the children, the oldest of whom 
was only in his fifteenth year, saved them 
from reproach, slanders, hatred, and perse- 
cution. Perhaps the only matter of aston- 
ishment is that, in a frontier town, which 
had at that time a considerable population 
of a wild and lawless character, there was 
not more of violence and outrage. It needed 
no little firmness on the part of Mr. Daven- 
port to go quietly on the even tenor of his 
way, amid ridicule, charges of fraud and 
imposture, threats of prosecution and im- 
prisonment, mob outrage and Lynch law, 
and attempts at personal violence and clan- 
destine murder. His natural firmness of 
character, the consciousness of entire honesty 
and good motives, and the sympathy of 
many of the best men in Buffalo, sustained 
him. They were as interested in the matter 
as he could be. Furthermore, these marvels 
had come to him unsought and unexpected. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 25 

He naturally believed they had some pur- 
pose, which he trusted was a good one. He 
and his family seemed set apart for a pecu- 
liar work. It is not strange that he bore 
obloquy with calmness, and met threats 
with courage. He was in just the condition 
to have become a martyr. 

On one morning, at this early period, the 
family was sitting around the breakfast 
table, when the knives, forks, and dishes 
began to dance around, as if suddenly en- 
dued with vitality. In a few moments 
the table began to move, tipping up side- 
way, balancing itself on one leg ; and, finally, 
rising clear from the floor, floating in the 
air without the least support, and moving 
in such a way that it was wonderful that 
the dishes upon it did not slide off, and 
come crashing upon the floor. While the 
table was displaying these curious antics — 
William, the younger of the two brothers, 
exclaimed, ' There is the biggest man I ever 



26 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

saw ; what a large man !' As no one else 
saw any one in the room who did not be- 
long to the family, we are obliged to take 
the word of Master William for what he 
saw, or imagined he saw. The father inter- 
fered in his usual sensible way, saying, 
c William, my son, keep still. Perhaps this 
big man may have something to say to us. 7 
He may have read that it was the correct 
thing to speak to an apparition; it was, 
at least, but common politeness to give him 
a chance to speak, if disposed to do so. ]S T o 
voice came from empty space ; but William 
seemed moved to speak, and said, ' This 
stranger is so tall that he can scarcely 
stand up in this room ; and he is large in 
proportion. He is a real giant.' 

8 Will he tell who he is ; where he came 
from ; and what he wants of us ?' asked the 
father. 

The answer, still given by the boy, seems 
very absurd; but I give it as it is reported, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 27 

notwithstanding. The boy said, ' He says 
he is not of this earth ; his name is William 
E. Kichards ; and that he wishes to give us, 
and those who meet with us, important in- 
structions, on which much will depend in 
the future. 7 Obviously, all this may have 
come from the boy's excited imagination, 
though that would not account for the 
dance of the breakfast dishes or the flight 
of the table with the breakfast upon it, 
phenomena witnessed by the whole family; 
and which naturally predisposed them to 
believe in other and greater marvels. 

At two o'clock, p.m., according to the 
request of the imaginary or otherwise tall 
personage, not of this world, but bearing or 
assuming for the time the very sublunary 
name of c Richards,' the party assembled, 
including the Davenport family, and the 
friends they selected for so interesting and 
important a dance. In the room were two 
tables. The company sat around one. On 



28 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

the other had been placed, by direction, 
writing paper and pencils. 

They sat silently some two minutes, when 
in the broad light of day they all saw a lead 
pencil rise from the table, take a nearly per- 
pendicular position, as if held by some invi- 
sible being, and commence writing rapidly 
upon the paper, while the paper itself seemed 
to be alive and to move under the pencil. 

It is not in my power to give a copy of 
the document so curiously written. It con- 
sisted, in part, of directions for preparing a 
room, and procuring a large table, for the 
better accommodation of those who were 
coming from far and near to see these won- 
ders. ' Go/ said the paper, or pencil, or 
the invisible, supposed by William to be the 
giant he saw, or imagined he saw, c and I 
will go with you and assist in making a 
proper selection. When you come to a suit- 
able table I will rap my approval. 7 

They started immediately for a large 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 29 

furniture establishment, kept by Mr. Taun- 
ton Baldwin, and, after looking at several 
tables, waiting for the promised sign, they 
came to one, and were all startled, and 
especially the furniture dealer, by a loud 
and very emphatic detonation. Mr. Bald- 
win, unaccustomed to that mode of selecting 
furniture, enquired into the matter, and soon 
became satisfied that something made noises 
on or in his table. 

The most noticeable phenomenon described 
in the last portion of this chapter, that of 
a pencil writing without visible control, is a 
fact which does not rest upon the testimony 
alone of the Davenports, or those who saw 
it at their house in Buffalo. There have 
been many similar cases, related upon un- 
impeachable testimony. One that occurs to 
me was that of Senator Simmons, of Ehode 
Island. Wishing to see a certain name 
written by a pencil while he sat at the table 
and watched the proceeding, he saw the 



30 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

pencil move, rise, and make an ineffective 
effort to write, and then topple over as if 
the weight were too much for the force. 
He then took a pair of scissors, and, holding 
one of the bows over the paper, placed the 
pencil within it, in a perpendicular position. 
Then he distinctly saw the pencil, of itself, 
write out the name desired, and then, 
raising itself from the paper, go back and 
dot an i. There were other circumstances 
more important, perhaps, than the writing; 
but I have preferred to mention only the 
physical phenomena. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 31 



CHAPTER V. 

ORGANISATION OF REGULAR SEANCES. 

An Apology or Explanation — Marvellous Manifestations — 
Tests applied — Boys floating in the Air — A striking 
Test — March of the Family Crockery — Upheld by a 
Spectre — A Balancing Feat — ' George Brown ' — A 
Murdered Mans Story — A Boy carried off by a Ghost. 

The purchase of the large table, as narrated 
in the last chapter, was the beginning of a 
new series of manifestations. The friends 
of Mr. Baldwin, the furniture dealer, were 
curious to see the wonders he had witnessed, 
aud the home of the Davenports was filled, 
day and night, with eager enquirers. It 
was very repugnant to Mr. Davenport to 
receive money from those whose curiosity 
was gratified, and he steadily refused for 
many months to do so. His time was occu- 



32 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

pied, his business deranged, and his family 
burthened with expenses. It was only 
when he left home to take charge of the 
boys in their early journeyings that he con- 
sented to receive some compensation. It 
became necessary, moreover, to fix a price, 
if only as a means of excluding an idle and 
perhaps mischievous crowd that would 
otherwise have claimed admission. 

I do not know that there is any need of 
this explanation, or for any apology. Au- 
thors, artists, poets, statesmen, and ministers 
of religion, all live and all receive money 
for their work. Pie that serves the altar 
must live by the altar. The labourer is 
worthy of his hire. Every labourer — every 
one who renders a service — every one whose 
time we occupy, deserves payment, unless 
he obtains money under false pretences. 
The fraudulent, of course, have no claim 
whatever. 

Nor does the receipt of money afford a 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 33 

presumption of fraud, but rather the con- 
trary. It is always to be presumed that 
the man who wants our money wishes to 
render some equivalent. We are not to 
assume hastily that any man — much less a 
man of unblemished reputation — is an im- 
postor and a scoundrel. 

At the seances which now began to be 
held regularly, the manifestations already 
described were repeated. Loud raps were 
heard ; the table answered questions ; spec- 
tral forms were seen in the flash of a pistol; 
lights appeared in the upper parts of the 
room ; musical instruments floated in the 
air, while being played upon, above the 
heads of the company. It would be too 
much to expect of human nature to suppose 
that all these things were witnessed with 
simple faith and open-mouthed credulity. 
There were enough to say it was a trick, 
and to be determined to detect it. Probably 
nine out of ten, when told of what occurred, 

D 



34 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

declared it all a humbug, and that they could 
detect and expose it. Consequently, a close 
watch was kept upon the Davenports. Per- 
sons were appointed to hold them. The 
whole company took hold of hands when 
the room was darken ed; that each might 
vouch for the two next him. 

On one occasion, four persons selected 
for the purpose held the two boys; four 
others securely grappled Mr. and Mrs. 
Davenport ; and even the little Elizabeth 
was held by two others. Every possible 
precaution was taken. 

When all this had been arranged, Ira 
was lifted bodily into the air, until he rose 
above the heads of those who held him, 
and floated away close to the ceiling. Then 
both boys, Ira and William, were laid upon 
the table, and Mr. Plymptoo, a well-known 
auctioneer of Buffalo, was requested toehold 
them firmly by the feet. He seized their 
ancles, when Ira was raised bodily into the 



THE BEOTHERS DAVENPORT. 35 

air, followed by William. Not succeeding 
in holding both, he next tried the youngest, 
who, in spite of his added weight, was 
raised up with such force that his head 
broke through the ceiling of lath and 
plaster. Mr. Plympton had held to the 
boy with all his strength, but letting go, 
to prevent being himself drawn he knew 
not where, the boy, suddenly freed, went 
up — by lunar attraction, let us say, or 
terrene repulsion — with the result to his 
skull and the plastering already stated. 
The people who heard the crash thought 
the boy was killed, and called for a light ; 
but he was found to be quite unhurt. 
There was no mistake, however, about the 
hole in the ceiling. 

Another manifestation, to use a conve- 
nient word in describing what we have 
perhaps no proper name for, was on this 
wise : The company was seated around 
two tables, and the room quite darkened, 

D 2 



36 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Why darkened? it will be asked. Why 
not darkened ? might be asked as readily. 
It is a mystery, no doubt ; but the whole 
matter is equally mysterious. W T hile every 
person in the room was sitting by the 
tables, in the darkness, the door of a pantry 
was flung violently open, and the entire 
stock of family crockery and glassware 
taken from the shelves and piled upon the 
tables. I say * taken ' and ' piled.' As I 
do not know how it was done, or who did 
it, it is better, perhaps, to say merely that 
the whole stock was found to be heaped 
upon the tables, which had been placed 
together. Then the boys were raised up 
and placed upon the dishes, and all the 
chairs heaped upon the whole, without the 
agency of any mortal hand that could be 
discovered. All this was done without the 
fracture of a single article, and in total 
darkness. Lights were struck, and with 
great care the boys and chairs were taken 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 37 

down. The lights were again extinguished, 
and every article was restored to its proper 
place in the pantry, without the slightest 
mishap or accident. 

I am ' free to confess ' that if I were 
inventing facts, or manifestations, or phe- 
nomena, I should choose something more 
dignified than the displacement and place- 
ment of delf, china, and glass ; but a scene 
which was witnessed the next day, at a two 
o'clock matinee, may perhaps be more satis- 
factory. The room was not darkened, only 
obscured to a pleasant twilight. After 
several of the usual phenomena were exhi- 
bited, the two boys were raised from their 
chairs, carried across the room, and held 
up with their heads downward before a 
window. ' We distinctly saw/ says an eye- 
witness, - two gigantic hands, attached to 
about three-fifths of a monstrous arm ; 
and those hands grasped the ancles of the 
two boys, and thus held the lads, heels up 



38 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

and heads downward, before the window : 
now raising, now lowering them, till their 
heads bade fair to make acquaintance with 
the carpet on the floor.' This curious, but 
assuredly not dignified, exhibition was 
several times repeated, and was plainly seen 
by every person present. Among these 
persons was an eminent physician, Dr. 
Blanchard, then of Buffalo, now of Chicago, 
Illinois, who was sitting in a chair by the 
side of Elizabeth Davenport; and all pre- 
sent saw an immense arm, attached to no 
apparent body — growing, as it were, out of 
space — glide along near the floor, till it 
reached around Dr. Blanchard's chair, when 
the hand grasped the lower back round of 
Elizabeth's chair, raised it from the floor, 
with the child upon it, balanced it, and 
then raised it to the ceiling. The chair 
and child remained in the air, without con- 
tact with any person or thing, for a space 
of time estimated to be a minute, and then 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 39 

descended gradually to the place it first 
occupied. 

In the midst of a series of similar mani- 
festations, too numerous and too much alike 
in their general characteristics to be re- 
corded, there came one of a novel and start- 
ling character, which was destined to sena- 
rate the family, and start the two brothers 
upon that extraordinary tour around the 
world, which in ten years has brought them 
to the confines of Europe and the centre 
of one of its' most powerful kingdoms. 

One day, at a private seance to which Mr. 
Davenport had invited several of his friends 
and persons well known to him, the table, by 
tippings and rappings, spelled out a message, 
which purported to come from one ' George 
Brown/ who described himself as a Canadian 
farmer, who had resided at Waterloo, W. C, 
where his family still lived, and who had 
been robbed and murdered, in a place which 
he described, by members of a notorious 



40 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

gang of robbers, on both sides of the bor- 
der known as the Townsend gang. These 
particulars were given by one of the boys, 
speaking in a sort of cataleptic or trance 
state, in which he became, apparently, the 
proxy of ' George Brown.' He named the 
sum of money — fifty-two dollars, the price 
of a yoke of oxen he had intended to pur- 
chase. He, that is the boy, his spokesman, 
was cross-examined by a lawyer who was 
present, but he adhered to his story ; gave 
the name and residence of his wife, the num- 
ber of his children, and other particulars. 

Mr. Davenport was much impressed with 
the story, and went with a friend across 
the Niagara River to Waterloo next day, 
where, after due enquiry, he found that no 
such man as the ' George Brown ' had ever 
lived there. There was a rascal named 
Townsend, and a gang called by his name, 
but he could find no clue to the robbed 
and murdered farmer. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 4l 

Eeturning home chapfallen, it may be 
presumed, they met the sheriff of the county, 
and asked him if he had ever heard of a 
George Brown, of Waterloo. 

' Yes,' said the officer, ' but not this Wa- 
terloo ; a George Brown used to live at the 
other Waterloo, sixty miles away. I used 
to know him well, but he disappeared some 
time ago, and was supposed to have been 
robbed and murdered by some of the 
Townsend gang. I know his wife and fa- 
mily well.' 

The circumstances related by the sheriff 
agreed perfectly with the account the boy 
in the trance had given. 

On the return of the delegates to Canada, 
and before they could report proceedings, 
young Ira fell into the ' state,' took up the 
ghostly role of George Brown, the murdered 
man, and related everything that had hap- 
pened to them, including the conversation 
with the sheriff. 



42 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Great as was the impression made upon 
Mr. Davenport, he could not overcome his 
natural scepticism and fear of ridicule 
enough to go to the Waterloo, to find the 
widow of poor Brown, and make further 
investigations, though several persons offered 
to subscribe the money for his expenses; 
He shirked the responsibility. 

' George Brown,' still enacted by Ira, or 
finding representations and spokesmen in 
tables, or otherwise, did not appear to be 
pleased with the little faith given to his 
story, and the manner in which his wishes 
were neglected, and announced that he in- 
tended to take Ira to the scene of his mur- 
der. iSTot much attention was paid to what 
was considered an absurd threat ; but the 
boy, a few evenings after, while engaged 
in his daily task of delivering evening 
papers, first felt ' queer,' then lost his con- 
sciousness, and found himself standing in 
the snow, with no tracks around him to 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 43 

show how he had come there, in a solitary 
place, a mile and a half from home, on the 
right bank of the Niagara river. ' George 
Brown,' at his next visit, declared that he 
had carried him across the river, which is 
half-a-mile wide, and brought him back 
again, just as an experiment ; but as the boy- 
was unconscious all the time, until he found 
himself on the bank, while his family were 
sett-ins: alarmed at his absence, and as 
nobody saw him carried across the river, 
we have only i George Brown's ' testimony 
on the subject, which we are not obliged to 
believe without a sufficient corroboration. 

Of course, we cannot prove a negative. 
If the boy could be carried across the room 
and out into the street, why not across 
Niagara river ? — a feat beyond Blondin's, it 
must be confessed. If seventy feet, why 
not as many miles ? If people lose their 
gravity, or are hurried away by their emo- 
tions, or other sufficiently powerful in- 









44 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

fluences, who shall say how far they may be 
carried ? I believe simply that Master Ira, 
as he then said and still says, in a manner 
that carries conviction with it, found him- 
self standing in the snow on the bank of 
the Niagara, without knowing how he came 
there. As ' we must draw the line some- 
where/ I propose to draw it there. c George 
Brown ' may have wished to stretch it. Or 
he wished, it may be, to see his murderers 
stretching lines of a different description. 

In any case, I think Mr. Davenport, sen., 
ought to have gone to Waterloo, and he 
was soon very sorry that he did not. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 



CHAPTER VI. 

'we fly by night.' 

Hands and Voices — Advent of ' John King ' — Required to 
leave Buffalo — Refusal and the consequences — A ?nys- 
terious Night Trip of sixty Miles — Manifestations in 
Mayvitte — Another Ghost and Murder. 

Whatever opinion may be formed by the 
calm -judging reader of this matter of the 
murder of l George Brown/ of Waterloo, 
Canada West, it soon became evident 
enough that the Davenports had incurred 
the animosity of somebody. There came 
to them dark threats of vengeance. The 
boys were warned to be on their guard. 
They were too brave to mind much about 
obscure hints of assassination, and, like 
nine American boys out of ten, Ira armed 
himself with a loaded pistol for their de- 
fence. One ni^ht the two bovs found 



46 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

themselves waylaid, and were fired at. Ira 
valorously fired in return, and then both 
took to their heels. The boys escaped 
without injury, except to their clothing ; 
there was a rumour that Ira's bullet had 
been better sped. Not long after, some 
friends came with the story that the house 
was to be attacked at night and the children 
murdered, and several persons volunteered 
to watch over and defend them. The boys 
were required to forego their paper-carry- 
ing expeditions, which were their business, 
play, and exercise. 

At the morning and evening parties 
of curious investigators into these strange 
phenomena, there were now not only heard 
the ringing of bells, thrumming of musical 
instruments, movements of various objects 
without apparent cause, including the three 
Davenport children, but hands, seemingly 
human, were both felt and seen. A hand 
and part of an arm would rise above the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 47 

table, plainly visible, and allow itself to be 
felt for a moment, when it would dissolve, 
melt into air in the very grasp and under 
the eyes of the spectator. Then a voice, 
coming out of space, at first inarticulate, 
but later condensed as it would seem in a 
large horn or trumpet provided for the 
purpose, spoke distinctly to them, conversed 
with them, answered their questions, and 
advised or directed their proceedings. I 
do not know that this voice was a greater 
marvel than many others that I have re- 
lated. The first thing that occurs to every 
one is that it was the result of so common 
an art as ventriloquism. A ventriloquist 
has no difficulty in making a voice appear 
to come from up a chimney, or out of a 
box, or from the cellar. Other illusions 
can be managed by tubes and reflectors, as 
in the 'mysterious lady' exhibited some 
years ago, and the Anthropoglossos or 
4 singing head 7 more recently. With a 



48 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

common speaking tube, a person a hundred 
feet distant, and in another part of a large 
building, seems to be speaking close to your 
ear. But Mr. Davenport and his family 
knew that they were not ventriloquists, and 
all who came to see them could easily 
satisfy themselves that there was no ma- 
chinery. Besides, the voice was only one 
of so many ' signs and wonders ' that it was 
hardly worth trying to account for that, 
unless the others could be explained as 
easily. 

The voice was asked, among other things, 
what was its name. Tt replied that names 
were of no consequence — one would do as 
well as another, and they might call it 
1 John King,' which they do to this day, 
or familiarly 4 John.' This c John,' the 
name of a voice, said to the father of the 
Davenports that he must take his two sons 
away from Buffalo, that it was dangerous 
for them to stay, and that they were needed 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 49 

elsewhere. Mr. Davenport would not con- 
sent either to leave his family with them 
or allow them to go. He thought they 
were very well as they were. lie had 
come to have some faith in the voice, and 
the things he saw and heard, but saw no 
sufficient reason why he should go about 
the world to give other people a chance of 
witnessing the same phenomena. If people 
wished to see them, let them come to the 
boys. Decidedly the boys should not go to 
them. The reply was, that if they were 
not allowed to go, they could and would be 
taken. 

The strange event which took place as 
the result, apparently, of this conversation, 
is variously vouched for ; but I have pre- 
ferred to take the facts from the lips of 
Mr. Ira Davenport, the elder of the two 
brothers. He says that he was walking 
one evening, at about nine o'clock, in the 
streets of Buffalo with his brother William, 

E 



50 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

this being the winter of 1853-4, and the 
boys in their twelfth and fourteenth years. 
Here Ira's recollection ceases. The next 
thing he knew was that he found himself 
and his brother in a snow-bank, in a field, 
with no tracks near him, near his grand- 
father's house, at Mayville, Chautauque 
County, New York, sixty miles from 
Buffalo. On waking up William, who had 
not returned to consciousness, they made 
their way to their grandfather's house, 
where they were received with surprise, 
and their story heard with astonishment. 
Their father was immediately informed by 
telegraph of their safety and whereabouts, 
and he, good obstinate man, set himself to 
find out how they got to Mayville. On 
enquiry, he found that no railway train 
could have taken them, after the hour they . 
left home, more than a portion of the 
distance, and the conductors on the road 
knew the boys, and had not seen them. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 51 

c John ' declared, through the trumpet, 
after their return home, that he had trans- 
ported them, or caused them to be trans- 
ported, simply to show Mr. Davenport that 
they could be taken to any distance as 
easily as they could be carried about the 
room, and to show him that it was useless 
for him to try to keep them in Buffalo. 
The boys, so far as I can judge from the 
manner in which the story was related to 
me by Ira, undoubtingly believe that they 
were taken by no ordinary means of con- 
veyance, and that the difficulties of the 
journey were overcome for them in some 
unexplained and inexplicable manner by the 
same power, whatever that may be, which 
has for eleven years worked in their pre- 
sence so manv marvels, not less difficult of 
explanation than their little trip from 
Buffalo to Mayville. They do not say that 
they were carried all the way, or part of 
the way. They think they must have 

E 2 



52 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



walked a long distance, for their feet were 
blistered. They were there, and knew not 
how. 

During this visit to the residence of their 
grandfather, a circumstance occurred which 
made a strong impression upon the whole 
family, and especially upon the father of 
the young Davenports, who had come to 
bring them home. One night the whole 
house was alarmed by cries, slamming of 
doors, thumpings,rappings, and other noises. 
The grandfather, a religious man, came from 
his room with his Bible, which failed to 
bring quiet. When the first consternation 
was over, a voice was heard trying to speak 
to them. It could not at first be under- 
stood ; but a tin horn having been pro- 
cured, the voice issued from it with suffi- 
cient distinctness to tell its story. It (the 
voice, let us say) declared itself to be 
4 John Hicks,' a brother-in-law of Mr. 
Davenport, who had some years ago lost 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 53 

his first wife, married another, and died 
suddenly some time after. The voice, 
coming out of the trumpet which had suc- 
ceeded the racket, told a sad and startling 
story. It said 'John Hicks ' (whose voice 
it professed to be) had been poisoned by his 
wife ; but it exacted a promise from Mr. 
Davenport that he would let his body and 
the whole matter rest, and not seek for 
justice or vengeance against his murderess. 
This, to a man full of the discipline and 
habits of the police department, was a hard 
promise to keep. Mr. Davenport related 
the matter to his friends, and their curiosity 
stimulated his sense of duty, and he pro- 
ceeded to have the corpse of his brother- 
in-law disinterred and subjected to a post- 
mortem examination. The Dr. Blanchard 
already mentioned was one of the phy- 
sicians. The details of the examination 
have not been submitted to the writer 
hereof — only the fact that the stomach and 



54 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



contents were found entire, with appear- 
ances to justify, to say the least, strong 
suspicion of foul play ; but the evidence 
was not sufficient to convict the supposed 
offender. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 55 



CHAPTER VII. 

STRIKING TESTS AT BUFFALO. 

Keeping to the Facts — S. B. Brittairfs Experience — Visit of 
Rev. B. F. Barrett — Statement of Stephen Albro and 
Mrs. Tayloi — Most surprising Wonders. 

There remains little more that need be 
said of the lives and adventures of the 
Brothers Davenport in their native city. 
The father was at length brought to the 
belief that they had a wider mission, and 
consented, for a time, to accompany them. 
I may, however, mention a few of the more 
striking and peculiar displays of the mys- 
terious force and intelligence, or intelligence 
controlling force, which claimed to have 
produced the phenomena already described. 
It will be observed that I have ventured 
no opinion, and offered no theory, respecting 



56 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

the nature of this intelligent force. It called 
itself, in the first instance, 'Kichards ;' then 
it adopted the name of l John,' or l John 
King.' It, or something, professed to be 
' George Brown, of Waterloo/ who had 
been murdered for his money ; and it, or 
something else, declared itself to be ' John 
Hicks,' poisoned by his wife, like ' Hamlet's 
father.' It may be hard to believe that the 
voices w r ere produced or the manifestations 
made by any of these persons ; but it is 
also rather difficult to prove the contrary. 
Let us, then, like true Baconian philo- 
sophers, cling to our facts. 

4 How can we reason, but from what we 
know V Let us have the facts first, and in- 
ferences afterwards. We may not be able 
to impeach our only witness, — a tipping 
table, a pencil writing without a hand, or a 
voice making itself audible or articulate by 
means of a tin trumpet ; but I do not see 
that we are bound, on the other hand, to 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 57 

put implicit faith in their unsupported tes- 
timony. 

Many persons went from New York to 
Buffalo, three hundred miles, to witness the 
manifestations. During a visit of J. B. 
Brittain, Esq., a well-known writer and pub- 
lic speaker, a number of photographic por- 
traits were placed in his hands, which he 
knew to have been half-a-mile away when 
the seance commenced, while no one had 
entered the house to bring them. On this 
occasion the forms produced, as from space, 
seen and felt by all present, were those of 
young children, of two years old ; and as 
there were no such children in the house, 
there was no thought of imposture. More- 
over, the three young Davenports were heard 
and felt floating in the air over the heads of 
the company, each holding some musical 
instrument, and producing sounds which 
marked their progress. Mr. Brittain stood 
up and felt them in the air above him. 



58 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Another of these visitors was the Rev. 
Mr. Barrett, Swedenborgian clergyman at 
Brooklyn, near the city of New York. As 
a Swedenborgian he believed, of course, in 
common with all Christians, in the existence 
of beings separated from the common forms 
of material existence ; but he did not believe 
that they had power to act upon matter, and 
of this, if true, he wished to be convinced. 
As a test he brought with him a glass bottle 
of immense strength, which he proposed 
should be broken by an invisible force. As 
a security against deception, he locked him- 
self into a room with the two boys. He ex- 
amined every part of it, for trap-doors or 
means of concealment. He laid the bottle 
on a table and sat down, placing his hands 
and feet on both the boys, so as to feel the 
least motion they could make. Then he 
blew out the candle. 

The first thing that occurred was suffi- 
ciently ludicrous. The just extinguished 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 59 

candle was rubbed all over his face. A 
voice, plainly heard by all three, for no 
others were present, informed him that it 
was a preparation to enable him to swallow 
the truth, of which he was to receive evi- 
dence. Then came a blow, an explosion 
or concussion, that sounded like the stroke 
of a sledge-hammer, and the bottle flew 
across the room, broke the plastering on 
a brick wall, but was itself unbroken. It 
was replaced upon the table. A louder 
and heavier blow came with a similar re- 
sult. This process was repeated seven 
times, each time with greater force, and 
the last time the bottle was shattered into 
a hundred pieces, flying all over the room, 
a piece grazing the face of Mr. Barrett. 
His hat, which he had placed upon the 
floor at one end of the room, was then 
plunged into a tub of water which hap- 
pened to be standing at the other end, and 
in that state placed upon his head. 



60 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

When the candle was lighted Mr. Barrett 
began to gather up the pieces of the bottle. 
Ira asked him what he could want of them. 

'When my friends, to whom I tell the 
story, say that I was " psychologized," or 
hallucinated/ said he, * I wish to show 
them these pieces of glass, and ask them 
if they are also hallucinated when they 
believe thev see and handle them ? ! 

Blowing out the candle again, Mr. Bar- 
rett was raised in his chair from the floor, 
and received other tests of an equally con- 
vincing character. 

Sceptics, then as now, often resorted to 
private tests, but never without being 
exposed, and sometimes in a ludicrous 
manner, worthy of the ' tricksy spirits ' 
of our great dramatist. One day a gentle- 
man blacked the mouth of the trumpet 
through which the voice was heard to 
issue, supposing he could b} 7 that means 
detect whoever should use it. In the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 61 

course of the conversation with the voice 
he asked that he might be touched. In- 
stantly he felt a finger moving around his 
lips. On a candle being lighted, he went 
eagerly to examine the mouths of the boys 
and others present, to see if they were 
blacked ; but every one burst into a laugh 
at seeing a black circle, as if made with 
the mouth of the trumpet, around his own. 

Of another seance given at this period, 
I find a circumstantial account published 
in a Buffalo . weekly newspaper, l The Age 
of Progress,' describing a visit of the editor 
to the Davenports, dated October 13, 1855, 
and signed by the editor's name — Stephen 
Albro. 

Mr. Albro had been requested to procure 
a seance for a lady, whom he accompanied 
to the room at 10 o'clock, a.m. on the day 
appointed. He says : — 

' Mr. Davenport and his elder son were 
present, and we four locked ourselves in, 



62 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

that we might be entirely secluded and free 
from interruption. I then took particular 
note of everything in the room — saw that 
the only two ways of ingress were secured, 
and that there was no possibility for any- 
one besides ourselves to be in the room, or 
to get in without our knowledge. Then 
one of the two inside window-shutters was 
closed, and the other was partially closed, 
leaving an opening of about two inches in 
width, and consequently apertures above 
and below, through all which a sufficiency 
of light was admitted to make a twilight in 
the room, by which I could plainly see 
every one around the table ; see both ave- 
nues of ingress, and detect every motion of 
everv hand in the room. When accustomed 
to the light, I read an advertisement which 
hung up against the wall, ten feet from 
me. Ira sat next me on my left, the lady 
on my right, and Mr. Davenport on the 
opposite side of the table.' 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 6 



After several manifestations, William 
came and knocked at the door, and was 
admitted, when the manifestations became 
more powerful, xlfter mentioning several 
incidents similar to those already described, 
Mr. Albro continues : — 

4 The next manifestation was the appear- 
ance of human fingers, from under the 
table [where bells had been rung, musical 
instruments played, &c, while the editor 
had carefully guarded against deception], 
reaching over the edge of the table and 
leaping upon it. Then whole hands ap- 
peared in the same manner. These fingers 
and hands were from the size of a large 
man's hand to that of a small child. [No 
children were present.] The largest ones 
were black, and all the others were white. 
[Observe, that there were but five persons, 
including the Davenports, in the room, 
which was light enough for everything to 
be distinctly seen.] During the time of 



64 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

these exhibitions I put my hand under the 
table. In a minute after, I felt the pressure 
of cold fingers on my thumb. Then it 
was grasped by a whole hand. I asked 
who it was that grasped my thumb, and 
was told that it was the spirit of my 
father, the truth of which was soon made 
evident by my own vision. I then re- 
quested my father to grasp my whole 
hand, which he did with such power 
that it reminded me of the almost giant 
grip which he occasionally made me feel in 
urchinhood. He had a large and very 
powerful hand ; and the one which grasped 
mine was like it, both in size and power. 
By the raps an umbrella was called for, 
which was standing in a corner of the room. 
One of the boys brought it and put it under 
the table, closed. In a few moments it 
made its appearance from under the table, 
opened to its full extent. It came out at 
the end of the table, at the left hand of the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 65 

elder of the two boys, and was raised up 
and held over his head, the lower end of 
the staff remaining below the table, and 
between the boy's knees. It was moved up 
and down, and twirled round one way and 
the other, as it was held over his head. It 
immediately moved from him to me, the 
staff passing along against the edge of the 
table. My head being higher than that 
of the boy, it was necessary to elevate it, 
to get it over my head. In doing this, a 
female hand and arm, of the most exquisite 
model, appeared from under the table — the 
beautiful hand graspiug the staff of the 
umbrella, and moving it up and down, and 
turning it, as above related. To this narra- 
tive of facts, to which I append my signa- 
ture, I am ready at any time to append my 
affidavit : and further, I am ready to testify, 
under oath, that none of these things which 
I have related were done by any of the five 
persons in the room, and that no other per- 

F 



66 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

son belonging to this mundane sphere was 
in the room during their enactment. 

(Signed) ' Stephen Albro.' 



The above statement is slightly condensed 
from the original, but not altered in any 
essential particular. Mr. Albro, I am as- 
sured, was widely known in Buffalo and all 
that region as a man of high respectability 
and intelligence, — one not likely to be de- 
ceived, and certainly not likely to deceive 
others. 

The lady who accompanied Mr. Albro 
also furnished the following statement : — 



■& 



' To the Pieaders of the "Age of Progress." 

1 Mr. Albro having shown me the fore- 
going report in manuscript, and I being the 
lady referred to as accompanying him to 
Mr. Davenport's room, and witnessing the 
manifestations which he narrates, I hereby 
certify that this report is true in every par- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 67 

ticular — not including what he felt with his 
hands under the table. And I further cer- 
tify that his account, instead of exceeding 
the truth, falls much short of the reality of 
what I witnessed. 

(Signed) < Mary M. Taylor.' 

Jf it were considered worth while to do 
so, I could fill twenty volumes like this 
with similar statements, made under the 
solemnities of an oath if required, testify- 
ing to similar phenomena, and given by 
honest and intelligent witnesses, whose 
evidence would be taken by any court in 
Christendom in any case whatever. 

Mr. Albro appears to have been con- 
vinced that the hand which grasped his 
was that of his father, long since dead. 
What he appears to have known as a fact, 
was that it was not the hand of Mr. Daven- 
port, or of the lady or the two boys, the 
only persons present. So of the hands that 

F 2 



68 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

appeared at the end of the table, and the 
beautiful feminine hand and arm that held 
the umbrella. If the facts narrated by Mr. 
Albro stood alone, or if he and those with 
him were the only witnesses, we might throw 
them aside as a cheat or hallucination ; but 
when there are hundreds of such facts and 
thousands of such witnesses, it becomes 
more difficult. Still, a man of strong will 
can refuse to believe alm9St anything. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 69 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT ON THEIR 
TRAVELS. 

Beginning of the Binding Tests — Judge Paine's ingenious 
Experiments — Thread and Sealing Wax — Sewed up 
in Sacks — Invincible Incredulity — Tobacco Test at 
Cleveland — Betting and Sailors' Tests at Toledo — 
A German Philosopher at Ann Arbor — Tarred Rope 
and Waxed Ends at Rochester — A Series of Trials. 

When time enough had elapsed for the good 
people of Buffalo to be satisfied of the verity 
of the facts heretofore related, and when 
Mr. Davenport had seen and felt signs and 
wonders enough to satisfy him that he could 
no longer oppose the desire of the mys- 
terious intelligence to give the people of 
other regions similar opportunities, the two 
Brothers Davenport, accompanied first by 
their father, and afterwards by other per- 



70 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

sons who acted as their friends or agents, 
commenced the journeyings which have 
now continued nearly ten years, in which 
they have visited most of the important 
towns on one Continent, and have begun a 
similar mission in another hemisphere. 

It is impossible, in my brief limits, to 
fully describe the incidents of their long 
journeyings. The experience of one town 
or city was generally repeated in another, 
though the manifestations were varied, and 
new and more severe tests were proposed 
as old ones failed to detect what people 
thought must be imposture. The best I can 
do in this case, is to keep as nearly as pos- 
sible the order of .time, and select from the 
great mass of ever-occurring incidents those 
which seem most interesting in themselves, 
and those which will give the reader the 
best idea of the nature of the phenomena 
evolved, and the best means of judging, if 
such a judgment can be formed, of the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 71 

cause and purpose of what was done, by 
whom, and why. My own work in the mat- 
ter, as far as I can now see, is pretty much 
confined to the what, or the first part of the 
subject. The rest may, I hope, be safely 
confided to the judgment of an enlightened 
public. 

It was not long after the Davenport Bro- 
thers commenced to visit places where they 
were unknown, and where the wonders ex- 
hibited in their presence, and to which their 
presence seems to be in some way a neces- 
sary condition, created an intense and wild 
excitement, breaking out at times into blind 
and violent opposition and persecution, be- 
fore tests began to be required to satisfy 
people more or less that they were not im- 
posed upon by artful jugglers. The}^ were 
first held by persons selected from the 
audience, two or more being appointed to 
hold each of the brothers while the mani- 
festations were being accomplished. This 



72 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

process was found to be exhausting to the 
boys, perhaps from some adverse or antago- 
nistic magnetism, and unsatisfactory to the 
public, who looked upon those selected to 
hold them as confederates. It was then 
proposed to bind them with ropes. When the 
ropes, though knotted in the most careful 
manner by the most skilful persons, were 
found to be untied in a few moments, the 
crowd asked, naturally enough, c Why don't 
you have handcuffs V The handcuffs were 
procured ; but they were no more satisfac- 
tory than the ropes, for the intelligent audi- 
ence said, ' You have got handcuffs made 
on purpose :' but, as they seldom brought 
any themselves, it was difficult to satisfy 
their requirements. 

At Painesville, a small town in Ohio, on 
Lake Erie, Judge Paine, who had given his 
name to the township, contrived, with seve- 
ral of his friends, a series of tests which 
showed no little ingenuity. These were men 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 73 

of the class who may be called invincibly 
incredulous. Neither seeing, hearing, nor 
feeling, with them was believing. They 
would have delighted a recent writer in 
the ' Cornhill Magazine,' who has declared 
that no one ought to believe anything un- 
usual on any amount of evidence, that of 
his own senses included. 

After the brothers had been bound as se- 
curely as the Lake Erie sailors and riggers 
could tie them, and the manifestations had 
been made while they were thus bound, 
spectral hands shown, instruments played 
upon and thrown about, or they unbound 
by what appeared invisible agency, or the 
genii of Eastern story, the Judge proposed 
a test which, he said, would satisfy him and 
everybody. This of course ; nothing is 
more common than for a man to imagine 
that what satisfies him of the truth of some- 
thing hard to believe must satisfy everybody 
else. The result is, that each person who is 



74 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

satisfied is instantly denounced as a fool or 
a knave by all the remaining unbelievers. 
The learned Judge said, if the boys were 
bound, not with rope, but with linen thread, 
and this sealed with sealing-wax, and then 
the trumpet blacked with printers' ink, so 
as to blacken any hand that touched it, he 
would be satisfied, and everybody else, of 
course. The test was accepted : the mani- 
festations occurred as usual — the seals were 
unbroken. Was Judge Paine satisfied ? — 
Not in the least. The next day he was 
ready with a new test. This time, the boys 
were first tied with cords, then enclosed in 
sacks, and the sacks tacked to the floor. All 
the instruments were blacked, and every 
possible precaution taken. The hall and 
the streets were crowded with people. The 
hands were formed, the instruments whirled 
about in the air and beaten, and abundant 
evidence given that somebody or something 
was wide awake and active ; but when lights 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 75 

were brought, the brothers were very safe 
in their sacks. When the Judge saw them 
secure, he said to his friends, ' We've got to 
give in on this!' But next day he had 
a new theory : the boys had untied them- 
selves, ripped open the bags, made the mani- 
festations, and then got back again all safely 
sewed up and tied. Truly, there is no cre- 
dulity like incredulity. 

At Cleveland, a beautiful city on Lake 
Erie, a very obstinate sceptic, watching nar- 
rowly to detect some jugglery or imposture, 
was very suddenly and drolly converted to 
a belief in the genuineness of the manifesta- 
tions. He was sitting in the midst of the 
audience, when the voice which sometimes 
accompanies the manifestations was heard 
to say with emphasis, i No, I don't want any 
of that ;' at which the sceptic burst into 
laughter, which he afterwards explained. 
Taking a chew of tobacco, in a sort of bra- 
vado he held out the paper, mentally offer- 



76 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

ing some to the voice or its owner — to 
c John.' The words heard bv the audience 
were the instantaneous answer. 

Toledo is a port on Lake Erie, at the ex- 
tremity opposite to Buffalo, a town of con- 
siderable traffic, but having a population, it 
must be confessed, of a somewhat lawless 
character. The traveller who stops at a 
hotel at Toledo is likely enough to run 
against a Faro table, and will readily find 
men to bet on anything, from a trotting 
horse to a presidential election. Of course, 
a crowd assembled to see the now famous 
Brothers Davenport; and equally, of course, 
they began to lay heavy wagers on the suc- 
cess or non-success of the performance. A 
committee was selected to give the sporting 
men the fairest possible chance. It con- 
sisted of two sailors, two riggers, and two 
captains of vessels to direct operations. 
They brought their own rope, a sufficient 
quantity, and marlinspikes, to work with. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 77 

They not only tied the ropes about their 
heads, feet, arms, and bodies, in all the in- 
genious knots known to the craft, but 
spliced the ropes as well as tied them, and 
then wetted the knots, to make the rope swell. 
After three-quarters of an hour of hard 
work, the two captains declared themselves 
satisfied. It is doubtful if, without using 
their knives, they could have freed the boys 
in the time which had been taken to tie 
them. While thus bound, the usual mani- 
festations, of which I need not repeat the 
description, were given, and the boys found 
bound as strongly as ever. Then the lights 
were turned down, and they were found 
with every knot untied, completely liberated, 
in the space of five minutes. The losing 
sportsmen paid their bets, and the audience 
went home astonished if not satisfied. 

Not the least of the many difficulties and 
annoyances attendant upon the giving of 
such manifestations and tests as have been 



78 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

described, was the conduct of the committees 
who stood between the brothers and the 
large assemblages who everywhere gathered 
to see them. Sometimes it was difficult to 
get persons willing to serve ; at others they 
were prejudiced and unfair, or what theo- 
logians call 'invincibly ignorant.' For 
example, at Ann Arbor, in Michigan, a 
German, whose conceit and bad English 
made him a sort of favourite with the 
public, was selected to sit in the cabinet in 
which the two brothers were bound. He 
sat between them, so as to be able to tell at 
every moment whether they continued to 
be bound — whether they even stirred in the 
places to which they were firmly secured, 
and, above all, whether a concealed con- 
federate exhibited phantom hands, played 
upon the instruments, or threw them out 
upon the platform. The German was shut 
in the cabinet. The instruments climbed 
up his body, rested on his head, and were 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 79 

played upon as usual. Hands and arms 
appeared at the openings of the closet. He 
was between the two brothers, where he 
could hear every breath and feel every 
motion. The doors were thrown open, and 
they were seen to be securely bound. Then 
the German gentleman gave his testimony. 
' Were they fastened all the time ? ' was 
asked. 

' Yaas ; dey vas fastened every minute. 7 
1 Did they make any movement ? ' 
1 No ; dey never sdirred at all.' 
1 Was there anybody else there but you 
three?' 

i No ; nobody else vas dere. How coult 
dey be ? You could see dat yourselves/ 

1 Well, then, whose were the hands, and 
who made the noises ? ' 
1 Oh, dey vas de poysV 
' How do you know? You just said 
they were bound fast all the time, and 
didn't move.' 



80 A BTOGEAPHY OF 

' Yaas, dey vas fast enough ; but it most 
have been dem, because de-re vas nobody else 
to do it ! ' 

The logic is perfect, of course, but not 
entirely satisfactory. 

At Rochester, in New York, new methods 
of binding were tried, When fortifications 
were to be made for the defence of a town, 
and the council discussed the choice of the 
materials to be used, a man who owned a 
quarry was in favour of stone ; the pro- 
prietor of a brick-yard contended for the 
superiority of well-burnt bricks, and the 
tanner declared that ' there was nothing like 
leather.' Rochester, besides its millers and 
merchants, has a large population of canal 
boatmen and shoemakers. The canallers 
insisted on tarred ropes, while the shoe- 
makers stuck to waxed-ends, as the best 
means of tying the brothers securely. As a 
compromise, they used both, and the young 
men were first bound as fast as a sailor on 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 81 

' the raging Erie Canal ' could devise, and 
then finished off with the tyings of waxed 
thread by the shoemaker. It was of no use ; 
rather, it was of just the same use as any 
other thorough and satisfactory test. All 
the manifestations were given, which the 
audience satisfied themselves there was no- 
body to give, and then the boys in a few 
moments were freed from their adhesive 
entanglements. Those who could be satis- 
fied of the verity of what they saw were 
satisfied. Those who could not, were con- 
tent to call it a humbug and imposture, the 
nature and agencies of which, however, they 
were farther than ever from being able to 
explain. 

While on a visit to London, a large flou- 
rishing town in Canada West, in 1857, a 
seance was attended by his Worship the 
Mayor, and several members of the corpo- 
ration. The mayor himself actively assisted 
in fastening the brothers with tarred ropes, 

G 



82 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

and as a private test, which it is believed 
he communicated to no one, he blacked 
some of the knots which were not in sight, 
but which were afterwards found untied. 
When the doors of the cabinet had been 
closed a voice from the trumpet said — ' Mr. 
Mayor, why did you black the knots ? ' 
The result was that no visible hands were 
blackened. 

In every such case, it is to be observed, 
these two boys are put on trial of honesty 
and veracity. They declare that certain 
manifestations of physical and intellectual 
power — force directed by intelligence — take 
place in their presence, which neither they 
nor any other living person actively or 
consciously produce, Every seance is a trial 
more or less perfectly conducted of this first 
question at issue. The first fact established, 
other questions may be in order. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 83 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE CAMBRIDGE PROFESSORS. 

' Old Harvard ' — Scientific Incredidity — A University Com- 
mission — The Fox Girls — The Brothers examined — 
Plenty of Rope— Prof. Pierce in the Cabinet — 
Phosphorus — What came of it. , 

It was at about this period that certain 
Professors of Harvard University undertook 
to investigate, explain, and abolish every- 
1 thing of a preter- or super-natural character. 
Old Harvard is the Oxford of the New 
World — the oldest university, and one which 
holds the highest rank. Its seat is Cam- 
bridge, a suburb of Boston, which claims 
to be the Athens of America and the ' hub 
of the universe ' beside. Thus ; Boston is 
the most intelligent and scientific city in 
America, and America is the most intelli- 

G 2 



84 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

gent country in the world ; ergo, Boston in 
a literary and scientific way is the hub, 
focus, or pivotal centre — of the universe. 
Q.E.D. 

The parties arrayed in this contest were 
principally Dr. Gardner of Boston, who 
asserted that phenomena were exhibited 
above or beyond the ordinary operations of 
nature, and which could not be accounted 
for by physical laws as recognised by 
modern science ; and Professors Agassiz, 
Pierce, and others, of Harvard, who denied 
the possibility as well as the fact of such 
manifestations. As a rule, men who have 
made a reputation in any science drive 
down a stake there — erect a barricade which 
no one must pass, and are ready to de- 
nounce all discoveries which go beyond 
their own. They deny every alleged fact 
which does not square with their theories. 
Showers of fish may fall upon a marching 
regiment in India, and be fried and eaten 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 85 

by the soldiers ; toads may be seen coming 
alive from solid rocks blasted with gunpow- 
der twenty feet below the surface in quar- 
ries or railway cuttings, and the toads, and 
the rocks where they had lain ever since the 
rocks were formed, with the holes in which 
they reposed split across by the explosion, 
preserved and seen by all who care to see 
them, and yet no Professor of Xatural His- 
tory will admit the fact until he has got a 
theory to fit it. It is a humbug, an impos- 
ture, and a delusion. 4 So much the worse 
for the facts.' 

Our Harvard Professors made or accepted 
the challenge to examine some of the nre- 
ternatural phenomena — not that thpy had 
the least idea of finding and accepting truth, 
or advancing the cause or increasing the 
domain of science, but that they might ex- 
pose and authoritatively denounce what they 
believed to be a great imposture or a great 
delusion. It was a verv srood thing to do, 



86 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

provided they had been as willing to accept 
an established fact as they were to denounce 
an established humbug. 

Among the persons summoned to be 
tried before the Harvard Professors on the 
charge of falsely pretending that very un- 
usual, or what may properly be called 
super- or preter-natural phenomena oc- 
curred in, and seemingly by means of, their 
presence, were the Misses Fox, and the 
Brothers Davenport. The manifestations 
in the presence of the Fox girls were 
chiefly confined to loud explosive rappings 
or thumpings on tables, doors, or other 
vibratory substances, which raps manifested 
an intelligent source by answering ques- 
tions, written or mental, and spelling out 
messages. Phenomena, force, intelligence. 
This is what the Harvard Professors had 
first to investigate, before going further. 
The raps or thumps were plain and loud 
enough. They seemed to come from the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 87 

centre of doors or tables — the professors' 
doors or tables, which could not be sus- 
pected of jugglery. 

The girls, who have been described to me 
as honest and simple-hearted, were sub- 
jected by the learned professors to a very 
severe ordeal. First, they were carefully 
examined for concealed machinery. Then 
it was a question whether they could not 
make loud thumpings, as with a mallet, 
seeming to come out of the centre of a 
mahogany table, with their knee joints or 
toes. So their limbs were confined, and 
their feet placed upon pillows. It was of 
no use. The sounds continued all the 
same, and the professors made no other 
discovery but that there were unaccount- 
able noises. 

The Brothers Davenport were reserved 
till the last. At the beginning, they were 
submitted to a cross-examination. The 
professors exercised their ingenuity in pro- 



88 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

posing tests. c Would they submit to be 
handcuffed ? ' 4 Yes/ < Would they allow 
men to hold them ?' 'Yes.' A dozen pro- 
positions were made, accepted, and then 
rejected by those who made them. If any 
test was accepted by the brothers, that was 
reason enough for not trying it. They 
were supposed to be prepared for that, so 
some other must be found. It was of no 
use to put them to any test to which they 
were ready, and apparently eager, to sub- 
mit. At last the ingenious professors fell 
back upon rope — their own rope, and plenty 
of it. They brought five hundred feet of 
new rope, selected for the purpose. They 
bored the cabinet, set up in one of their 
own rooms, and to which they had free 
access, full of holes. They tied the two 
bovs in the most thorough and the most 
brutal manner. They have, as any one 
may see, or feel, small wrists, and hands 
large in proportion — good, solid hands 






THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 89 

which cannot be slipped through a ligature 
which fits even loosely on the wrists. 
When they were tied hand and foot, arms, 
legs, and in every way, and with every 
kind of complicated knotting, the ropes 
were drawn through the holes bored in the 
cabinet, and firmly knotted outside, so as 
to make a network over the boys. After 
all, the knots were tied with linen thread. 
Professor Pierce then took his place in the 
cabinet between the two brothers, who 
could scarcely breathe, so tightly were they 
secured. As he entered, Professor Agassiz 
was seen to put something in his hand. 
The side doors were closed and fastened. 
The centre door was no sooner shut than 
the bolt was shot on them inside, and Pro- 
fessor Pierce stretched out both hands to 
see which of the two firmly-bound boys 
had done it. The phantom hand was 
shown ; the instruments were rattled ; the 
professor felt them about his head and face ; 



90 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

and at every movement kept pawing on 
each side with his hands, to find the boys 
both bound as firm as ever. Then the 
mysterious present of Professor Agassiz 
became apparent. The professor ignited 
some phosphorus by rubbing it between his 
hands, and half suffocated himself and the 
boys with its fumes, in trying to see the 
trick or the confederate. At last, both 
boys were untied from all the complicated 
fastenings without and within the cabinet, 
and the ropes were found twisted around 
the neck of the watchful Professor Pierce ! 
Well, and what came of it all ? Did the 
professors of Harvard tell what they had 
seen ? Not in the least. To this day they 
have made no report whatever of the re- 
sult of their investigation, and are pro- 
bably, to this day, denouncing it all as 
humbug, imposture, delusion, et cetera. 
What can a man of science do with a fact 
he cannot account for, except deny it ? 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 91 

It is the simplest way of overcoming a 
difficulty, and avoiding the confession that 
there is something in the world which he 
does not understand. Of all men in the 
world, men of science, and especially 
scientific professors, are the last to acknow- 
ledge that c there are more things in heaven 
and earth, than are dreamt of in their 
philosophy. ' 



92 A BIOGRAPHY OF 



CHAPTER X. 

AMONG THE DOWN-EASTERS. 

Lola Monies — A Row in a Garret — A Storm of Feathers — 
A Scene at Portland — A Mad-house Test — Boxed up at 
Bangor — A Discomfited Darling — Seeing is not 
always Believing. 

Having got through with the Professors of 
Old Harvard, and passed through college, 
but without receiving the diploma to which 
they were entitled, the Brothers Davenport 
reposed at the Fountain House, in Boston, 
where they made the acquaintance of many 
distinguished personages in the literary 
emporium, of whom they pleasantly re- 
member the pretty, eccentric, and kind- 
hearted Lola Montes, Countess of Lands- 
feldt, who received what she believed to be 
communications from several of her de- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 93 

parted friends, and notably from her last 
husband who had drowned himself on their 
voyage from Australia to California. There 
was, of course, no inquest, for the body was 
never found, but a jury could not have 
hesitated to return a charitable verdict. If 
not a case of mental alienation, they could 
not have made it worse thsmfelo de se, with 
extenuating circumstances. The beauteous 
Lola mourned for him sincerely, and was 
very generous to his family. Here, also, 
they became acquainted with Mr. F. 
Woodward, who, in the absence of their 
father, who returned to Buffalo, became for 
a time their agent. 

Woodward entered upon this trust with 
very little, if any, faith in the reality of the 
manifestations. He presumed there was 
some trick about them ; but as he could not 
discover it, he thought others would not, 
and so he consented to aid in what he 
thought must be a paying speculation. 



94 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

On arriving at Newburyport, a beautiful 
seaport town of Massachusetts, north-east of 
Boston, the hotel at which they proposed to 
stop was so full that the only place they 
could get was a large attic, in which were 
a dozen or more double and single beds, ar- 
ranged as in a ward in a hospital, a common 
enough thing in America, where the ball 
room of a tavern is filled with cot-beds, in 
crowded seasons. 

In this large room, where there were al- 
ready two lodgers, Mr. Woodward took one 
bed, and the two brothers another. Wood- 
ward, being purse-bearer, put the wallet 
containing his money under his pillow. 
When the light had been extinguished a 
little while, the bed on which the brothers 
reposed began to rock about like a boat on 
the waves, or jolted with the motion of a 
hard trotting horse. Woodward called out 
to know what was up. On being told, his 
curiosity was greatly excited, and he begged 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 95 

to be allowed to come to them, that he might 
feel, at least, what was being done. 

He came, forgetting his wallet, but had 
no sooner laid down on the eccentric and 
demonstrative bed, than he heard his money 
jingling. He sprang to get it, but it was 
gone, and could nowhere be found. Then 
commenced a wild uproar in the room. 
Cords were broken, beds fell upon the floor, 
sheets and coverlids were torn in pieces, 
and the two strangers rose in a fright, 
dressed hastily, paid their bills, and went 
to find more quiet lodgings. The noise 
increased. Woodward felt strange hands 
seizing him. His wallet was restored as 
mysteriously as it had been taken. At last 
the landlord came up with a light, when 
everything became instantaneously as quiet 
as it had been tumultuous a moment before. 
He inquired the cause of the uproar. The 
young men could only protest that they had 
not made it. ' Well, then,' said the reason- 



96 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

able man, 1 1 should like to know who did 
if you didn't. There is nobody else here, 
and this room is in a nice condition, 1 
don't think.' 

' All we can say is, that we have been 
perfectly quiet, and have not made the least 
noise or done any mischief.' 

As the two Davenports and Mr. Wood- 
ward gave the same assurance, the landlord 
was a little staggered, but returning com- 
mon sense made him look about the room 
at his demolished furniture, and remark 
that they were, as far as he could see, the 
only persons who could have caused the 
damage he was already reckoning up to put 
in the bill, with serious doubts as to its 
speedy liquidation. 

1 We have told you all we know about the 
matter,' said Ira, ' but if you will blow out 
the candle, you may probably have a chance 
of judging for yourself.' 

Standing by the bed with the two boys, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 97 

and making sure of the presence of the 
equally astonished Woodward, the landlord 
blew out the light. The instant it was ex- 
tinguished the contents of a feather bed 
were emptied over his head, and the hul- 
laballoo began again worse than ever— 
ropes cracking, sheets tearing, and bedsteads 
crashing, until he felt his way to the door, 
escaped from the room, and rushed down 

stairs ' as if the was after him.' 

"When he had gone, things became peace- 
ful, and the three companions were left to 
their repose. In the morning the great 
garret room was as fine a spectacle of a 
wreck as one could wish to see. The land- 
lord's first impulse was to get his bill for 
damages paid, and then to get rid of his 
troublesome and alarming guests. Mr. 
Woodward paid the rather heavy bill — some 
sixty pounds for a night's lodging — and, 
at the urgent request of the landlord, they 
took their luggage to another hotel. But 

H 



it 1 

. IT:- 



ill 

98 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

the news spread, and the garret was visited 
that day by three or four hundred people. 

Travelling eastward from Newbury port 
they came to Portland, the finest seaport in 
Maine, and one of the best on the Atlantic 
coast ; a beautiful town, moreover, of 26,000 
inhabitants, and the residence of John Neal, 
novelist and poet. Here the excitement 
and the interest to see them was very great, 
but they were not the less subjected to tests 
of an extraordinary character. To make 
sure that the phantom hands — I say phan- 
tom, though they are palpable as well as 
plainly visible — were not the hands, of the 
Davenports (and it was made very certain 
that they could not be those of any other 
person) they were bound hand and foot, and 
to their seats, by two sea captains and two 
riggers, selected from the audience, who 
secured them with all the ingenuity and 
appliances of their craft. These adepts con? 
sumed not minutes merely but hours, at 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 99 

least hard upon two hours, in tying them. 
Their character was at stake, and they made 
very thorough work. 

In spite of all this the manifestations pro- 
ceeded as usual. While the two brothers 
were thus bound at each end of the cabinet 
as fast as human skill could bind, and the 
cabinet in which they were seated was 
watched on every side, above and beneath, 
by an eager crowd and a hard-headed com- 
mittee, the doors were fastened on the inside, 
not by a spring bolt, but by one that re- 
quires to be pushed by some force, and then 
began the ringing of bells, drumming on tam- 
bourine, tuning of violin and guitar, the 
appearance of hands and even of arms, and 
finally such a concert as could not have 
been played by less than three pairs of 
hands ; at the end, or as a finale to which, 
the doors were suddenly thrown open, the 
instruments rolled and tumbled out upon 
the floor almost before the noises had ceased, 

H 2 



100 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

and the committee and whole audience saw 
and felt that not a knot had been stirred, and 
that not one of the four hands of the two 
boys inside could by any possibility have 
been free for a moment, or have done any 
of the things that had been seen and heard. 
In the audience was an officer of the 
State Lunatic Asylum, and when they were 
next to be secured, he proposed to do it, 
not by ropes, but by an apparatus he had 
brought with him for that purpose, and 
which was one for binding dangerous luna- 
tics. This apparatus consisted in part of 
leather handcuffs, made so as to be as se- 
cure as those of steel, without being pain- 
ful. As an additional security, the gentle- 
man was allowed to be seated inside the 
cabinet between the boys, so that he could 
be sure, whatever was done, they had no 
hand in it. The doors closed — the centre- 
bolt shot of its own accord, and the instru- 
ments inside began their astonishing gyra- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 101 

tions. I am not aware of what was done 
by the gentleman who was keeping watch 
and ward, but for some reason, or without 
a reason, he got a severe blow upon the 
nose, and came out very thoroughly con- 
vinced that neither of the boys had given 
it, and requiring no more striking proofs 
that there were forces, and perhaps beings 
in the universe, with which or whom he 
had not been previously acquainted. 

Proceeding slowly through the state of 
Maine, in which they spent two years, visit- 
ing nearly every town of any importance, 
they came to Bangor, the great lumber- 
mart and manufactory on the falls of the 
Penobscot river, at the head of navigation r 
a thriving, busy town, and full of the very 
cutest and smartest of down-east Yankees. 

One of these, Mr. Darling, a prosperous 
master-carpenter, man of science, ingenious 
mechanic, who had made notable inventions, 
who was an energetic and leading man, and 



102 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

who, as a Swedenborgian, was well c posted ' 
in the matters not only of this world and 
its inhabitants, but of the i heavens, and 
hells, and earths of the universe,' wrote a 
piece in a newspaper, denouncing the Da- 
venport manifestations as utterly unworthy 
of any angels, demons, or spirits with whom 
he was acquainted, — and as a receiver of the 
faith and works of Swedenborg, he thought 
himself authorised to speak for them, — but 
an impudent and bungling piece of jug- 
glery, which he engaged to expose, if 
they would submit to a test he would pro- 
vide, without knowing it beforehand, so as 
to be able to circumvent it, under a penalty 
of three hundred dollars. 

This challenge was at once accepted, and 
the town, of course, thrown into a fever of 
excitement. The newspapers took up the 
matter, as they must every matter which 
greatly interests the public, according to 
the great law of supply and demand. The 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 103 

town thought and talked of little else than 
the great match between the Swedenborgian 
master- carpenter and the Brothers Daven- 
port. It may be doubted if even a presiden- 
tial election would have made a greater 
excitement. There are usually two parties 
to an excitement, but I believe a majority 
of the people of Bangor expected to see the 
Davenports thoroughly exposed and put to 
open shame, and there was somewhat of the 
combined sensation of a trial and execution 
at the same time — as if the judge, after a 
conviction for murder, instead of drawing 
on the black cap and passing sentence, 
should call in the executioner and have the 
convict hanged, after the manner of Judge 
Lynch and drum-head courts-martial. 

The night appointed came, and the hall was 
more than crowded — it was jammed. The 
brothers had no notion of the nature of the 
trial, and were, perhaps, as much astonished 
and as much amused as anybody, when Mr. 



104 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Darling and his six confederates marched 
solemnly upon the stage, with a load of what 
seemed boxes, and ropes, which turned 
out, upon examination, to be really a very 
ingenious apparatus. The audience cheered 
as if the victory had been already w r on, and 
the few who believed in the manifestations 
were gloomy and perplexed. If they did 
not doubt, they feared. 

Mr. Darling proceeded to adjust his 
apparatus. It consisted of long wooden 
tubes, two for the arms of each brother, 
fitting closely, and projecting three inches 
beyond the ends of their fingers. There 
were similar tubes for the legs. Holes had 
been bored in them, so that they could be 
fastened to the arms and legs, or otherwise 
secured. While Mr. Darling and his assist- 
ants were securing them, the Davenports 
aided them with suggestions, advising them 
to fasten the knots away from their teeth, 
and from experience instructing them how 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 105 

their limbs could be placed in more secure 
positions. This cool and quiet confidence 
greatly troubled Mr. Darling. He trembled 
with excitement. The perspiration rolled 
from his face. At last the operation was 
declared completed. Persons from the au- 
dience were invited to examine the fixtures. 
They were decided to be ' in a tight place,' 
and the announcement was received with im- 
mense applause. Editors, preachers, and other 
sceptics, were in a state of ecstatic beatitude. 

1 Now, ladies and gentlemen,' said the 
agitated Mr. Darling, l they are secure.' 
The house was hushed to silence. The two 
side-doors were closed and fastened, shutting 
in two-thirds of the cabinet, then the centre 
door was shut, and instantly bolted on the 
inside — by whom ? 

Mr. Darling heard the sound with a con- 
sternation he could not conceal, but began 
to seal up the doors with sealing-wax, as 
if anyone could open them unobserved, 



106 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

under his eyes and the eyes of the whole 
assembly. Directly the instruments in 
the cabinet began to be played, hands and 
arms were displayed at an opening near 
the top of the centre door, the trumpet was 
thrown out of the cabinet, and then the 
doors suddenly opened, and the boys found 
as firmly secured as ever. The doors were 
closed again, A great rattling and whisking 
of ropes was heard for a few moments ; the 
doors were opened, and the brothers stood 
up as free as when they had walked into the 
cabinet. 

Now the applause came from _ the other 
side, with mocking cries of ' Darling, Dar- 
ling ! ' Mr. Darling gave it up like a man. 
He had done his best. If anybody could 
do better, he was welcome to try. 

Their success in Bangor was of course 
triumphant, as it was generally through- 
out the State, and wherever the people gave 
the phenomena a fair, or even unfair exami- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 107 

nation. An affidavit was drawn up, sub- 
scribed and sworn to by a number of lead- 
ing and respectable citizens, who imagined 
that everybody would believe what they 
swore to, and of course they had the mor- 
tification of finding that their testimony had 
not the slightest weight with those who were 
determined that they would not believe, or 
whose minds were so constituted that they 
could not. It is said that belief is involun- 
tary. It is certain that unbelief, or appa- 
rent unbelief, with strong and persistent 
denial, appears to be accompanied at times 
with great wilfulness. 

Mr. Darling, of Bangor, may have been 
converted, or have remained sceptical ; but 
if he went away a believer, and expected 
any person who had not seen what he did, 
to believe it on his testimony, he was pro- 
bably disappointed. The wife of his bosom 
may not improbably have said to him, c My 
Darling, you are either a knave or a fool, or 



108 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

both together, to come and tell me such 
rubbish. 7 And she would have been con- 
sidered a sensible woman, though indulging 
too much in her candour at the expense of 
her politeness. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 109 



CHAPTER XL 

MORE WONDERS IN MAINE. 

A Riot and a Fight— 1 Capt. Henry Morgan the Buccaneer'' 
— Mr. Rand's Story — The Escritoire unlocked — Mrs, 
Rands testimony. 

These manifestations, as I may have men- 
tioned, however triumphantly given, in spite 
of all the various tests to which they «were 
submitted, were met everywhere with a 
more or less violent opposition. In large 
and orderly towns, the brothers were only 
denounced as charlatans, jugglers, and hum- 
bugs generally; in the smaller ones, and 
among ruder communities, they were some- 
times assailed with open violence. Thus, 
while holding a seance in the town hall of 
the small seaport town of Orland, in Maine, 
Ira became conscious of an impending row, 






110 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

not as coming from the audience, but from 
4 outsiders ; ' and before they had far ad- 
vanced in their operations, the doors were 
broken open by a rabble of drunken sailors 
and fishermen, who, it was afterwards said, 
had been hired by a zealous Methodist, with 
a hundred dollars, to drive them out of 
town. - ! 

The town-hall immediately became the 
scene of a desperate fight. Benches were 
torn up, windows smashed, women screamed 
or fainted, and all hands went in for a rough 
and tumble i scrimmage,' in which the boys, 
of course, took part, and the assembly 
succeeded, at the expense of many broken 
heads, black eyes, and bloody noses, in beat- 
ing off their assailants ; but for that day, 
the manifestations were, of course, prevented, 
unless some took place during the melee. 
The assaulting party was beaten off, but 
it might gather reinforcements and return ; 
so they barricaded, armed themselves as 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. Ill 

well as they could, and waited. There was 
no second attack, and the assembly went to 
their homes. 

c Well/ I said to Mr. Ira Davenport, when 
he had got so far in the narrative of this 
affair, as I have substantially given it, ' what 
happened them ? Did you go away and 
try some less belligerent neighbourhood !' 

4 No ; we stayed there. "Morgan" told 
us to go on.' 

L But a while ago it was " John," or 
"John King," who seemed to have the 
direction of your affairs.' 

4 Yes, but at this time it was Henry 
Morgan, the buccaneer. We had some more 
seances, and from that time everything was 
perfectly quiet and satisfactory.' 

I am not sufficiently familiar with the life 
and character of Captain Henry Morgan to 
be able to say whether he was a likely 
person to manage such manifestations as 
were given in presence of the Brothers 



112 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Davenport, but a bold buccaneer ought to 
be 'some* in a fight. The things done 
require somebody, or something to do them, 
and that somebody or thing may call him- 
or it-self Henry Morgan, and we have no 
means of establishing an alibi, or in any 
way proving the contrary. This being the 
case, we will stick to the facts, and reserve 
the mooted point of identity for more mature 
consideration. 

This visit or mission to the State of 
Maine was made in 1857. Among the 
persons with whom they became acquainted 
in this State was Mr. Luke P. Rand, who 
accompanied them on their return to Buffalo, 
and in their visits to various places. At 
Oswego, New York, in 1859, he published 
a pamphlet of sixty pages, containing his 
own observations and experience, connected 
with the manifestations. It is entitled c A 
Sketch of the History of the Davenport 
Boys,' &c. He seems to have been — for I 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 113 

understand that he died some time ago — an 
honest, simple-hearted, zealous, religious 
man, and he quotes whole pages of Scripture 
to prove that whereas there were signs and 
wonders and marvels formerly, say from 
the creation down to a few centuries ago, 
there is a possibility of their occurring at 
the present day ; though he would hardly go 
so far, I presume, as to claim that the beat- 
ing on a tambourine by invisible hands, or 
by visible hands apparently not connected 
with living human bodies, was to be com- 
pared with a Scripture miracle. I think 
Mr. Rand would have done better to have 
kept to his facts, of which he seems to have 
witnessed an abundance, and to have left 
alone both theories and Scripture. I am 
satisfied by internal and external evidence 
that he has made an honest statement of 
facts, and some of these I purpose to give, 
with the testimony of his wife, and others 
published in his pamphlet. 



114 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Mr. Rand, writing with great earnest- 
ness, and as far as I can judge with entire 
sincerity, says that * scores and hundreds 
were permitted to feel the kindly and intelli- 
gent clasp ' of a large and strong hand, 
growing out of space, . or coming out of 
darkness, which he believed to be the hand 
of i Henry Morgan,' and of other hands 
similarly produced, as in the case of Mr. 
Albro, already cited. Mr. Rand says, 4 I 
have often felt, not only the clasp but the 
grasp of that hand, handling me as if I were 
a child, holding the grasp until the indenta- 
tions of the pressure were clearly seen by 
the audience, when my hand was released 
from the spirit-hand, in full view, in the 
clear bright light. Often, within three 
seconds from the time we have seen the 
boys pinioned to their seats, beyond the 
possibility of release by themselves, has that 
hand, at a distance beyond their possible 
reach, clasped my own with a firm grasp, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 115 

and thus been thrust forth into the full gaze 
of the audience. And many scores of others 
have felt the same grasp and had the same 
experience. . . The facts are so astonishing 
that we often find persons who are not 
only incapable of receiving the testimony of 
others, but unable also to rely upon the 
evidences of their own senses. 

1 In the town of Milford, Maine, in the 
presence of twenty-five persons, a ; ' secre- 
tary " (escritoire) was unlocked by invisible 
hands, and numerous articles taken out and 
distributed among the audience. In this 
case the key had been in the lock. The 
owner then placed the articles back, locked 
the " secretary/' and placed the key in the 
hands of a gentleman present, selected for 
the trust. All persons in the room joined 
hands, so that each one was held by two 
others. The light was extinguished by one 
who was held, and we instantly heard the 
bolt of the lock slide, and the contents of 



116 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

the " secretary " were again distributed 
among our company, in perfect stillness. 
A large spy glass was drawn out to its 
utmost extent, and brought far across the 
room over the heads of several persons, and 
placed, partly upon my head, and partly 
upon the head of a gentleman of Bangor, 
who sat next to me. The gentleman to 
whom the key was entrusted, held it in his 
hand all the time, and no person could have 
moved about the room, had there been such 
person, without being detected. This com- 
pany was a selection of intelligent and can- 
did persons, assembled there for the express 
purpose of testing these manifestations.' 

In the testimony of Mrs. Rand, as com- 
municated to a newspaper of Oswego, New 
York, and afterwards published in this 
pamphlet, she says : ' As one who has a 
right to speak of things she knows, will 
I make my solemn declaration. On or 
near the first of January 1858, I was 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 117 

called to attend a seance of these boys 
(Brothers Davenport) held in Bradley, 
Maine. A company of ladies and gentle- 
men were assembled, forming a double cir- 
cle, the ladies being in the centre, and the 
gentlemen in the rear ; we all joined hands. 
Mr. Woodward invited us to sing and we 
did so.* Next a committee was chosen to 
tie the boys. When they were securely tied, 
the lights were extinguished, and sounds 
from the instruments in the box in which 
the boys were seated and tied, were heard. 
Tunes were played, in which could be dis- 
tinguished the sounds of five different in- 
struments — a guitar, tambourine, drum, 
violin, and bell. The bell was repeatedly 
rung outside the box, and touched some of 
the party on the shoulders and head, and 
then fell upon the floor. A hand was visibly 

* This exercise of singing is sometimes resorted 
to for the purpose, it is said, of harmonizing the 
circle. 



118 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

protruded from a hole in the upper part 
of the box. The sounds were made to the 
last moment before the doors were opened, 
and the committee examined the boys, and 
reported that every knot in the rope was 
as they left it. It had taken the committee 
fifteen minutes to tie therm' 

1 At Milford,' continues Mrs. Eand — and 
here we come to some very curious ex- 
periences, ' I was invited by the presiding 
spirit, or what purported to be so,' — observe 
that the lady means to be very careful in 
her statement — ' to sit with the boys in the 
box. I accepted this invitation, only wishing 
to be assured of gentle usage. I was 
fastened to a seat between the boys by a 
rope around my wrists, and passing through 
an aperture in the seat that I might not be 
able to assist in the legerdemain. I saw 
the boys when I took my seat by them, and 
know they were fastened as securely as 
ropes and the strength of man could fasten 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 119 

them ; as only lions would need to be 
fastened for man to feel secure in their 
presence. Darkness ! and as quick as that 
word can be spoken came a hand, large and 
strong, upon my head. Where did that 
hand come from ? It was larger than the 
hands of either of the boys, and came 
quicker than they could have possibly been 
freed, had they ever so great dexterity. 
The audience were all seated with joined 
hands. Next, a large bell was drawn across 
my face. A guitar was placed in my lap, 
withdrawn, and replaced. A drum and 
other things were piled against me, and 
again the hand moved over my head, rested 
a moment on the back of my neck, when I 
distinctly felt the form of a wrist. Some- 
thing was close to my hair, and a moment 
after, when the doors were thrown open, and 
the whole audience rushed to see what had 
been done, the ropes were all tied as 
strong as ever, but my comb was found 



120 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

twisted into Ira's hair. The doors were 
again closed, my comb was put back into 
my own hair, and the instruments were 
thrown around us. 7 

Mrs. Rand then quotes several passages 
of Scripture to show that miracles have 
been, and closes her testimony. 

Mr. Eand accompanied the Brothers to 
Buffalo, and with them visited many places 
in New York, where he had some very ex- 
traordinary experiences, which I shall notice 
more particularly in their proper place. 

I may also observe that here as elsewhere 
I have somewhat condensed the testimony 
of the witnesses, by throwing out super- 
fluous expressions, but have in no way 
changed the purport of their language. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 121 



CHAPTER XII. 

MORE PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES. 

A Bravo in the Cabinet — Jugglers and Conjurors — Domestic 
Manifestations — The necessary Conditions — Tables set 
by Invisibles — They eat Food like Mortals — Remarkable 
Testimony. 

On their return from Maine towards 
Buffalo, the Brothers, accompanied by their 
friend Mr. Rand, arrived at Lowell, a manu- 
facturing town in Massachusetts, often, from 
the number of its cotton mills, called the 
Manchester of America. Here they remained 
for four weeks, giving public and private 
seances, and creating, as everywhere, a 
1 great sensation.' During this period a 
seance was arranged for twenty-five persons, 
and the boys were warned by their invisible 
confederates, this time by means of raps on 



122 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

a table, that there was a conspiracy to ex- 
pose them. A man had been selected to 
enter the cabinet with them who had been 
a gambler and a bravo in San Francisco, 
where he had killed two men, and been half 
hanged himself under Judge Lynch, from 
whom he had been barely rescued. This 'dare 
devil ' was determined to fathom the mys- 
tery, and his friends stood by to assist him. 
On being tied, not too securely, between 
the two boys, who were thoroughly fastened, 
he managed, by the aid of a dirk knife in 
his sleeve, to cut the rope and free his 
hands. At the instant he received a blow 
over the forehead, with a trumpet, which 
cut a deep gash, from which the blood 
spirted freely. He seized Ira, and found 
him tied securely as ever. He turned and 
grasped William, who was also closely 
bound. He called ' light,' and a dark lan- 
tern was thrust through the hole in the 
door, and by its light he saw that no one 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 123 

was in the cabinet but the two Brothers and 
himself, and that their fastenings had not 
been changed in the slightest degree. He 
opened the doors, and his friends seeing him 
wounded and covered with blood, supposed 
he had been attacked and rushed forward to 
revenge him. 

The bold, bad man was not a mean one. 
' Stand back ! ' he shouted, ' these boys did 
not strike me — they did not touch me. 
Look for yourselves. There they are, bound 
exactly as you left them. Gentlemen, you 
can do as you like, but I have had enough 
of it.' 

Another of the party, still unsatisfied, 
took his place in the box, to try the same 
game, but found himself so instantaneously 
seized by hands which he knew did not ap- 
pertain to visible bodies that he became 
frightened and begged to be let out. 

Going from Lowell to Boston, the Bro- 
thers Davenport found a man by the name 



124 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

of Bly pretending to expose them or their 
jugglery by cutting ropes and the aid of 
confederates. The brothers confronted him, 
claimed to be tested in the most thorough 
way by the persons who had seen the Bly 
performance and knew its methods, and 
were entirely successful. In eleven years, in 
America, where people are not wanting, at 
least, in shrewdness and inventive powers 
— in trickery, or the power of seeing into 
trickery — net only has no one ever ad- 
vanced a plausible explanation on the 
hypothesis of fraud, sleight-of-hand, col- 
lusion, &c, but the most adroit conjurors 
— Mr. Herman, of New York, for example 
— have fully acknowledged that their art 
afforded no explanation. Indeed, they are 
as different as possible. Four persons out 
of five know how almost every trick of the 
jugglers is performed. They can be studied 
in books ; their apparatus can be bought of 
the manufacturers, who instruct purchasers 






THE BROTHERS DAVENFORT. 125 

in the various tricks and illusions ; they 
are advertised in the ' Times ' newspaper. 
Some jugglers, after doing certain tricks, 
explain the modus operandi. Juggling is 
a parlour amusement. But the things 
daily and nightly done in the presence of 
these young men, and in which it is made 
evident to every one who has eyes and 
hands, and chooses to use them, that they 
have and can have no active agency, have 
never been explained on the hypothesis 
of legerdemain, illusion, or collusion, and it 
is quite certain that they never can be. 

After leaving Boston, the Brothers 
visited Worcester, and Springfield, Massa- 
chusetts, Troy,Waterford, Saratoga Springs, 
Utica, and Rochester, in New York, and 
were joyfully welcomed home by their 
family and friends after their long absence. 
And here I may, as well as anywhere, give 
some account of the very peculiar mani- 
festations, of what we may call a domestic 



126 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

character, which occurred at various times 
when they were at home, in the presence 
of their family and of familiar friends, 
when all the conditions may be supposed 
to have been favourable to their manifesta- 
tions. 

The first of these conditions appears to 
be darkness. Why darkness should favour 
these operations, or why light should hinder 
them, it may be difficult to explain : we 
may be content with the fact. Total 
darkness, it has been seen, is not always 
necessary; but the greater part seem to 
require at least a partial obscurity. For 
some reason, the belief that supernatural 
manifestations are more proper to night 
and darkness than to the open light of day, 
has existed always and everywhere. 

Quiet, harmony, and the isolation of the 
persons who seem in some way necessary 
to the operation of the generally invisible 
forces, are readily obtained in a home circle. 






THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 127 

In these family parties, when it was 
desired to give their friends an opportunity 
to see other than the usual manifestations, 
and when every precaution had been taken 
to secure the necessary conditions, and also 
to exclude the shadow of suspicion, or even 
of doubt, from the mind of any ; when 
everything had been arranged, and the 
lights were extinguished, a curious perform- 
ance would commence. The table would 
be drawn out into the centre of the room, 
the table-cloth spread, the dishes brought 
from the pantry, fifteen feet distant, the 
table set, tea made, bread cut, and the 
slices buttered, and then tea poured out for 
the party. While this was doing, there 
were heard noises like the rustling of 
women's garments. Once, when Mr. 
Davenport, Senior, was sitting tilted back 
on the hind legs of his chair in an Ame- 
rican fashion, he was suddenly thrown over 
backward.* Afterwards, a communication 



128 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

was rapped out by the alphabetic telegraph, 
in which a lady begged to apologise for the 
accident, caused, as she said, by the hoops 
of her l crinoline ' having accidentally caught 
under the raised leg of the chair in 
passing. 

If one thing were more strange, or inex- 
plicable, or incredible than another in all 
this history, I confess that I might hesitate 
at giving the following narration, which I 
have received from the lips of the Brothers 
Davenport, and which I find confirmed in 
the pamphlet of Mr. Eand. It is proper to 
say, also, that I have had from as credible 
people as I am acquainted with, scores of 
similar narratives. Such may be found 
abundantly in a recent work by the cele- 
brated William Howitt, and also in a meri- 
torious book by Thomas Brevior, which is 
quite a compendium of preternatural mani- 
festations and experiences. 

Mr. Eand also testifies to something 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 129 

which may be harder to swallow than the 
fact of tables and dishes setting themselves, 
and supper getting itself ready, or being 
got ready by invisible hands. It is, that 
these mysterious intelligences eat — eat like 
common mortals, and appear to relish their 
food, and have good appetites, and, it is to 
be hoped, good digestions. At all events, 
if we believe the testimony, the food disap- 
pears; and, hard as this may be to believe, 
it is not more difficult than what I have 
witnessed in London, and what has been 
witnessed by hundreds, as will be recorded 
in its proper place. 

Mr. Rand, writing at Oswego, New 
York, in 1859, where he was with the 
Brothers Davenport, says: — 

' Within the last few weeks a new order 
of manifestations has been introduced. 
Spirits [this is the name which Mr. Rand 
chooses to give to invisible intelligences, or 
mysterious intelligent forces, and it may be 

K 



130 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

as good as another] have spoken with 
audible voices, in the light, without a 
trumpet, as we have rode or walked by the 
way, and exhibited hands, placing them 
upon our persons, and handling us freely. 
[If Mr. Eand, by the plural pronouns, 
simply meant himself, this testimony would 
not be of much worth ; as what only one 
person sees, hears, or feels may be readily 
referred to imaginary or other illusions ; but 
I do not understand him as claiming to 
have seen or heard any such thing when 
not in the presence of the Brothers Daven- 
port.] Spirits have also eaten food in our 
presence ; cake, fish, boiled corn [maize], 
pineapple, and other fruits. We [here he 
clearly speaks of more persons than one] 
have usually placed the food upon the table, 
darkened the room, provided against any 
deception ; then taking our seats around 
the table — near it or distant from it, as 
the case might be — the spirits have freely 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 131 

eaten, and talked to us the while. Six or 
eight ears of corn [green maize, boiled] 
have often been eaten in this way at one 
time, and in some instances much more, 
together with fruits and other food. Of 
this we have had proof, as the spirits have 
often brought the corn to us, and requested 
us to partake with them. 

1 On one occasion,' continues Mr. Eand, 
' a party of gentlemen came to witness this, 
and brought thread to tie the Brothers 
Davenport. They were first secured firmly 
by ropes, then the thread was added ; after 
which the boys' mouths were muzzled. 
Bandages were also put upon the mouths 
of all persons in the room. The pine-apple 
was then sliced and placed upon a stool 
entirely removed from the boys, when it 
was eaten by unseen visitors, who were 
heard in their merry repast, and the rinds 
of the pine-apple were found dropped at 
their pleasure [sic] at the close. There are 



132 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

plenty of witnesses to these facts, whose 
names can be given to those who apply to 
Rufus Briggs, of this city (Oswego, New 
York). For the satisfaction of any who 
may wish for evidence on this matter, we 
give the names of a portion of the persons 
present when the Davenports were tied 
with ropes, and further secured with thread 
and muzzled, and yet food was eaten [dis- 
appeared ?] in their presence/ 
The names given are — 

4 Philander Rathbun, 
John Knapp, 
Samuel Reynolds, 
David Fairchild, 
Kufus Briggs.' 

It might be worth while for some person 
to write a letter to Oswego, directed to 
either of these gentlemen, enquiring if these 
things happened as here related. 

Mr. Rand is satisfied that what he calls 



THE BROTHEKS DAVENPORT. 133 

1 spirits' do really eat food like common 
mortals, and he makes the following state- 
ment in proof. 

1 An Indian spirit has often brought from 
the table to me an ear of corn (maize or 
Indian corn), inviting me to eat of the 
same with him, which I have often done. 
He has taken my hand, placed my fingers 
between his teeth, and given me sensible 
evidence of their reality. He has placed 
my hand upon his head, so that I could 
feel its form, and his long straight hair, 
most sensibly. And others have had this 
same experience, and the world will know 
that these are facts.' 

I have no question of the perfect sincerity 
of this statement, but it will be doubted by 
many whether all necessary precautions 
were taken against deception. On the other 
hand, it does not appear that there was any 
disposition or motive to deceive. The 
pamphlet does not seem to have been written 



134 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

in the interest of the Davenports, or for any 
purpose but to enable Mr. Rand to give to 
the world what he seems to have believed 
were important truths. 

As to the disappearance of material 
objects, as in this case, those who know 
most of matter will have least difficulty. 
Destroy certain forces, or suspend their 
operation, and all material forms become as 
nothing. Loose the attraction which holds 
in their places the atoms of a globe of steel, 
or the great globe itself, and they would 
become invisible gases. In truth, we know 
so little of matter, and it is so difficult to 
prove that matter exists, that the most 
advanced physicists of the present day are 
disposed to consider all material forms as 
nothing more -than modifications of force. 
Abolish matter, and we have nothing left 
but force and its governing intelligence. 



THE BROTHEES DAVENPORT. 135 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE IMPRISONMENT IN OSWEGO. 

Mr. Band and his Testimonies — Strong tests at Oswego — Pro- 
secution and Imprisonment — An Astonished Jailer — 
The Prison door unlocked ivithout visible hands- 
Declaration and Affidavit. 

I now proceed to give some account of 
the adventures of the Brothers Davenport 
in Oswego, New York, and its vicinity, as 
contained in the pamphlet of Mr. Rand, 
their ' guide, philosopher, and friend,' from 
which I have made some extracts in the 
preceding chapter, including a small perse- 
cution, and a rather remarkable martyrdom. 
Mr. Rand had made the acquaintance of 
the Brothers Davenport during their visit 
to Maine, and appears to have become very 
familiar with the mysterious forces, powers, 



136 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

intelligences, or whatever they maybe, who, 
or which, according to their own testimony, 
are engaged in the production of the asto- 
nishing phenomena which will be found 
imperfectly described in these pages. Mr. 
Eand chooses to call these powers, forces, 
or intelligences, * spirits ' — I do not know 
upon what authority, and have some doubt 
of the strict propriety of the term, as applied 
to beings that have hands which grasp, 
teeth which bite, and who eat hearty sup- 
pers of boiled Indian corn and pine -apples. 
This, however, is a mere verbal criticism. 
Words and names are not of much conse- 
quence, if we understand what is meant by 
them ; and Mr. Eand has a right to use his 
own designations so long as he states the 
facts correctly and honestly to the best of 
his knowledge and belief, and that he does 
this I see no reason to question. He says : 
c The boys came into our vicinity, and we 
were invited to attend their circles, and 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 137 

became deeply interested in the manifesta- 
tions. The circles at which we made our 
first acquaintance with them were held in 
Orono (our residence), Old Town, and 
Bradley. I mention these places because 
the Davenports spent nearly a year at 
this locality, making it their home for the 
time — holding many circles, both in public 
and private, during their stay here, in the 
midst of a large circle of their friends, who 
had every opportunity of becoming ac- 
quainted with the boys, and the manifesta- 
tions given through them. We also made 
the acquaintance of the spirits ; they seemed 
like familiar friends — they talked much with 
us and to us — they came to our homes, and 
talked familiarly with us and our children, 
often shaking us by the hand, often passing 
their hands upon our brows and upon our 
persons, handling and freely playing upon 
musical instruments, five and more, even, 
at the same instant of time, and giving the 



138 A BIOGEAPHY OE 

most unmistakeable and absolute positive 
demonstration of their presence and power 
in a great variety of other ways and modes 
of communication.' 

I will give the remainder of the testimony 
of Mr. Rand, as to what he witnessed at 
public and private seances in the city of 
Oswego, and then condense from his very 
remarkable pamphlet the account of their 
persecution, arrest, trial, and imprisonment 
in Oswego, with the release of Mr. Rand 
from prison by supernatural, or if the 
word is preferred, preternatural agency, with 
the sworn affidavit of all the witnesses to 
this very striking manifestation, which is 
just as incredible, impossible, and true, as 
all the other phenomena described in this 
volume. 

c At a large and stormy audience in the 
city of Oswego,' says Mr. Rand, c a com- 
mittee, selected from that audience, tied 
and worked upon these Devonport boys 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 139 

more than one hour, putting on all the rope 
we then had, about ninety feet, though we 
have often carried one hundred and fifty 
feet", and twenty-seven feet of strong cord 
furnished by the audience. To this we 
submitted, to satisfy the audience ; and then 
the younger boy's knots were firmly wound 
and secured by new and strong copper wire, 
bent and twisted on with forceps. This we 
also allowed for the test ; and then the 
doors of the box were sealed with wax and 
private seals, and every avenue by which 
anyone could approach the box was guarded 
by sentinels. Then were the lights extin- 
guished, and the older boy was untied in 
eleven minutes — every knot. He was taken 
out and held by the committee, and the 
younger boy examined, and the knots and 
fastenings found all secure. The box was 
again closed, and the younger boy left alone. 
He was released from his bonds of ropes, 
knots, and twisted wires in eight minutes.' 



140 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

To suppose the possibility of a slight 
youth of nineteen, with no instruments, and 
firmly bound with ropes and wires, hand 
and foot, on his seat and to his seat, shut 
up in darkness, and unaided, freeing him- 
self, by first untwisting copper wires twisted 
on with forceps, and then untying more 
than a hundred feet of rope and cord, when 
it was not in his power to make the least 
movement toward' such an operation, is, to 
speak very mildly, exquisitely absurd. 

The next test, as described by Mr. Rand, 
ought also to be considered satisfactory — if 
people, in such a case, could be satisfied. 
He says : — 

' At a private circle of about forty per- 
sons, in the city of Oswego, the Davenport 
boys, with Wm. M. Fay, who took a seat 
with them, were all fastened at the extremes 
of a very long and large table, with strong 
fine cotton thread, wound closely round 
their wrists, and tied in many knots, each 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 141 

wrist of each boy being wound many times, 
and closely tied in many knots each time, 
and then the threads on either side of each 
lad carried out a few inches, tied in a knot 
at the end, and tacked down to the table by 
a common tack, and that knot and tack 
sealed with wax. This was faithfully done 
by a committee. All had an opportunity 
to look upon the knots and seals, and all 
knew it was utterly impossible for either 
boy to move his hand without breaking the 
threads. The instruments were then laid 
in the middle of the table, far beyond the 
possible reach of the boys. The audience 
were then all tied together by ropes and 
cords, so that no one could move without 
the knowledge of others, and then, on ex- 
tinguishing the light, those instruments 
were taken up and borne about the room 
and over our heads, and thrummed and 
played by some intelligent hands other than 
our own. This was certain, as instantly on 



142 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



lighting the gas we found the boys, in 
every instance, firmly tied and immovably 



secur 



The William M. Fay here mentioned is a 
young man of about the same age as the 
Brothers Davenport, and appears to be en- 
dowed with, or attended by, similar powers. 
He was born in Buffalo, of German parents, 
and one of the first evidences he gave of 
being attended by extraordinary manifes- 
tations was, when playing with other boys, 
being raised bodily from the ground, and 
lodged in a neighbouring tree, in sight of 
his companions. He joined the Brothers 
Davenport during their visit to OsAvego ; 
and his name will often appear in the future 
pages of this narrative. 

While on this celebrated visit to Oswego, 
an important town near the eastern extre- 
mity of Lake Ontario, with water-power, 
mills, commerce, and a population of 
17,000 inhabitants, the Brothers Daven- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 143 

port accepted an earnest invitation to visit 
a small village, named Phoenix, twenty miles 
from Oswego. At this place, while giving 
a private seance, they were arrested, at the 
instigation of some persons whom Mr. 
Rand describes as ' legal bigots and perse- 
cutors,' who, c with fiendish exultation,' 
conducted them before the village magis- 
trate, where they were charged with vio- 
lating a municipal law which provides that 
persons exhibiting shows, circuses, mena- 
geries, &c, should procure a license. The 
Brothers had never thought of complying 
with this formality, licenses not being re- 
quired for concerts, lectures, and similar 
entertainments. Their seance was a concert, 
so far as the playing on musical instruments 
by invisible, or very slightly visible, per- 
formers, was concerned ; a lecture, as to the 
explanations of Mr. Rand ; and as to the 
tying and untying of knots, moving of pon- 
derable bodies by invisible forces, &c, it 



144 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

may have been considered as philosophical 
experiments. Only on the hypothesis that 
they were jugglers, or sleight-of-hand per- 
formers, could they be fined for neglecting 
to procure a license. 

Mr. Kand undertook to defend his own 
case, and I do not see that his efforts dis- 
proved the proverb so dear to the learned 
profession of the law, which says that ' a 
man who pleads his own cause has a fool 
for a client.' He made a speech filled 
with scriptural quotations, and resting upon 
the facts of the case. He should have pro- 
posed a seance then and there, with the 
magistrate to superintend the tests and 
operations. They were fined thirteen dollars 
and thirty-nine cents. — say, two pounds 
fifteen shillings — or in default, to suffer 
one month's imprisonment at the county 
jail in Oswego. 

As this fine was considered by Mr. Rand 
and the Brothers Davenport — and, what was 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 145 

considerably more important to them, the 
intelligences who directed their movements, 
and who told them not to pay a farthing — 
a sort of religions persecution, they became, 
in a mild way, martyrs to the truth, and, 
refusing to pay the fine, were taken to 
prison. Of course, their friends were 
aroused ; those who believed in them were 
indignant, and the general public was 
greatly excited. 

On arriving at the jail at Oswego they 
were met by their friends, and the first 
thing done after entering the prison was to 
give a seance, for the benefit of the jailer, 
who was as curious as the rest of the world 
to witness the manifestations. His mode of 
procedure also, in choosing satisfactory tests, 
was highly original and effective ; and here 
let me copy from the pamphlet of Mr. 
Eand, which was published on the spot, 
which appeals to a whole community of 
witnesses, and which has never, to my 

L 



146 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

knowledge, been invalidated. The account 
says : — 

' The jailer, having expressed his willing- 
ness [to witness some manifestations], ad- 
justed iron handcuffs to the boys' wrists, and 
made them fast to the iron bars in the door 
of the cell ; a trumpet, furnished for the occa- 
sion, was then placed back into the cell, 
beyond the possible reach of the Brothers 
Davenport, their hands being fastened in an 
elevated position by the handcuffs to the iron 
bars of the cell doors, the boys standing in 
the cell. The cell was then made dark, by a* 
cloth being put up at the bars of the door. 
Then the trumpet was taken from the hack part 
of the cell, where it had just been placed, 
and brought to the bars of the door, and 
beat upon them ; and a voice spoke through 
the trumpet familiarly, holding an intelligent 
conversation with us who stood without the 
door of the cell, in relation to the circum- 
stances under which we had come to the 



J 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 147 

jail — stating to E. Briggs [the Bufus Briggs 
heretofore mentioned], who was present, 
that he [the voice] would not have their 
friends outside get excited, as if we were to 
be let out of the jail immediately : that there 
was a purpose to be executed in relation to 
our coming to prison, and that we were to 
remain there.' 

Was the jailer convinced by this mani- 
festation ? It appears not. He did not 
understand it, and, taking refuge in his 
ignorance, said : ' It was a matter for scien- 
tific investigation!' Not bad for a jailer; 
but Mr. Band was indignant at such an 
answer, and that any man could doubt that 
the power which brought the trumpet to 
the cell door and then spoke through it was 
any other than an intelligent being. There 
was no question about the phenomena. The 
two young men were alone in the cell, fast 
handcuffed to the bars of the door ; and the 
trumpet came itself, or was brought, and 

L '2 



148 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

words were spoken. As to the words there 
may have been some chance for doubt ; but 
I agree with the jailer that the trumpet, 
at least, required scientific investigation ; 
though of what nature may be a question. 
Perhaps judicial investigation would be 
better. 

While confined in this jail, at first in cells, 
and later in a larger and more comfortable 
room, they had a great number of visitors, 
and gave many seances, which there was no 
disposition to hinder, as they were not 
imprisoned for any crime, but merely for 
refusing to pay a fine, wrongly inflicted, as 
they believed, for a supposed disregard of a 
municipal regulation. About five or seven 
days before the expiration of their term 
they were directed to settle their affairs 
and hold themselves in readiness. This 
direction came from whatever intelligence 
held communication with them, and some 
of their friends were told that they might 



\ 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 149 

be expected to be set free in an unusual 
manner. The jailer became interested, and 
enquired why the mysterious forces, so 
worthy of ' scientific investigation/ did not 
unlock their prison doors. Mr. Eand says 
that, from what he — the jailer — had seen, 
he seemed to believe that they could do it. 
However, he put a new lock on the door, 
determined to do his duty in every emer- 
gency. 

The last night came. They were all to- 
gether in the room, Mr. Rand and the two 
Brothers Davenport, and he took the boys 
by the hand and talked like a father to 
them. The jailer came to the door of the 
room at the usual locking-up time, and 
asked if they were all there. ' We answered 
promptly to the call that we were.' He put 
on a new lock which they had never seen. 
4 Then/ says Mr. Rand, ' immediately, sooner 
than we expected, a voice spake in the room, 
and said that I was to go out that night. 



150 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

I was told to put on my coat and bat and 
be ready. It was oppressively warm in our 
small room, witb tbe window and door both 
closed, and I asked if I could be allowed to 
sit with my coat off, as I did not expect we 
should be released for more than an hour; 
but the answer was : " Put on thy coat and 
hat — be ready." Immediately, not more 
than twenty minutes from the time we were 
locked up, the door was thrown open, and 
a voice said, " Now, go quickly. Take with 
you the rope ( one which had been in the 
room), go to yonder garret window, and 
let thyself down and flee from this place ; 
we will take care of the boys. There are 
many angels present, though but one speaks." 
The boys came out with me into the hall, 
took up the lock which lay upon the floor, 
and for the first time examined it, and spoke 
of its being warm. They were told [by the 
voice] to return to the room, and the door 
was closed and locked again. ' 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 151 

Mr* Eand, having made his way out of 
the jail, expected the boys to follow him. 
He told a friend whom he met that they 
were coming, and wrote the same to his 
wife, who was then in Massachusetts. It 
never occurred to him that the door was 
relocked. He says solemnly : 4 It matters 
not to me what force these statements may 
have in the minds of others ; I make them 
because they are true. Before God and 
man I make them, and shall make them 
while I exist; and, thanks be to God on 
high, I am not alone in -this testimony. ' 

The boys, Mr. Kand came to think, were 
not allowed to go out, because people would 
not believe ; and they might have been 
again imprisoned for making their escape. 
■ There are those,' he mournfully says, ' who 
cannot believe, who cannot entertain facts 
from human testimony. It is with them, 
as when, in a strange locality, the sun rises 
in the wrong place. They cannot make it 
seem right.' 



152 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



Even the jailer was cruel enough to 
charge Mr. Rand, when he went back to 
the jail, with having deceived him, and not 
being in the room when he came, with a 
new lock and extra care, to lock them in 
for the night. This was a rather lame 
excuse for the jailer, for it was his most 
special business to have known that these 
prisoners, at least, were locked up safely. 
If the jailer, whose business it was to know, 
and with all his experience of the trumpet 
manifestation, and others, when he had 
himself manacled the boys to the cell door, 
could not believe that his strong lock had 
been unfastened and fastened again by that 
power which Mr. Rand believed l was 
nothing else than the strong spirit-hand of 
Henry Morgan,' what credence could be ex- 
pected of ' outsiders' who had had no such 
experience ? The more wonders — and the 
greater the wonders — proclaimed of these 
Brothers, the louder, of course, would rage 
the storm of abuse, and the stronger would 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 153 

be the accusations of jugglery and impos- 
ture. After all, there was no proof of the 
unlocking and relocking of the door, and 
the preternatural escape of Mr. Eand, but 
his own declaration and that of the only 
two witnesses, corroborated by the fact that 
the jailer ought to have known, and believed 
he did know, that he had locked them all 
three into the room with more than usual 
care. These declarations they made in the 
most solemn form possible, and under the 
sanction of an oath, taken before two magis- 
trates, as follows : — 

1 Declaration and Affidavit. 

' Be it known to all people, that in the 
seventh month a.d. 1859, we, the under- 
signed, were imprisoned in the common jail, 
in the city of Oswego, N.Y., on account of 
propagating our religious principles, and 
that after twenty-nine days of our confine- 
ment, at evening, when we were all in our 
prison-room together, as we had just been 



154 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

locked in by the jailer, we having truly 
answered to his call, a voice spoke and said : 
44 Band, you are to go out of this place this 
night. Put on your coat and hat — be ready." 
Immediately the door was thrown open, and 
the voice again spake and said : " Now walk 
quickly out and on to the attic window yonder, 
and let thyself down by a rope, and flee from 
this place. We will take care of the boys. 
There are many angels present, though but 
one speaks. 1 '' The angelic command was 
strictly obeyed. 

4 That this, and all this, did absolutely 
occur in our presence, we do most solemnly 
and positively affirm before God and angels 
and men. 

6 Subscribed and sworn before me, this 
1st day of August, 1859. 
(Signed) 

4 James Barnes, 
i Justice of the Peace. 

4 Ira Erastus Davenport. 
4 Luke P. Band. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 155 

1 Subscribed and sworn before me by 
William Davenport, this 5th day of August, 
1859. 

< W. B. Bent, 
' Justice of the Peace. 

' William Davenport.' 
Are we to believe that these three men 
have added to imposture lying, and to lying 
perjury ? 

Or were they themselves the victims of 
some delusion ? 



156 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



CHAPTER XIV. 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI AND BACK TO THE 
ATLANTIC. 

Fastening a Committee — Sewed in Sacks — Social Science 
Congress in Michigan — Beating the Telegraph at 
'Chicago — Bombardment of Fort Sumter — Dark Lan- 
thorns in the Bark Circle — A Fight with a Spectre — A 
Confederate discovered — Washington — Baltimore — 
Riots and Prosecutions. 

After a brief stay at their home in Buf- 
falo, to which they returned after the events 
narrated in the last chapter, the Brothers 
Davenport commenced a tour westward by 
the southern shore of Lake Erie. At the 
beautiful town of Cleveland, Ohio, where 
their weird exhibitions were attended by 
large assemblages, an unusually hard-headed 
committee, in spite of the usual tests, per- 
sisted in the theory of legerdemain, and 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 157 

proposed on the next evening to bring tests 
which should satisfy everybody. 

This being agreed to, a greater crowd 
than ever came to assist at the trial. The 
Brothers were bound with cords to their 
seats in the cabinet. Then their wrists 
were tied together with shoemaker's waxed 
thread. Next, silk tapes were fastened 
around their wrists and fingers and sealed 
with sealing-wax. The musical instru- 
ments were then lashed to the middle seat 
of the cabinet quite beyond their reach. 

When all was completed the Brothers, 
accustomed to the shifts and subterfuges of 
committees, insisted upon a public acknow- 
ledgment that they were satisfied with the 
tests. It was made. 'Is there any loop- 
hole, any way to back out ? ' they asked, 
' None whatever/ was the answer. The 
doors were closed and instantly the music 
began to play, the bell to ring, hands 
were protruded, and manifestations made of 



158 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



an unusually startling character : the doors 
were opened, and seals, tapes, and strings 
were unbroken. The committee, if not 
satisfied, was confounded. 

At Akron, Ohio, the test demanded, as 
perfectly satisfactory, was that after being 
bound as securely as the ingenuity of the 
committee could effect it, the Brothers 
should be carefully and strongly sewed up 
in sacks ; and this they also submitted to 
with the usual result. 

Similar scenes, perpetually varied, but 
with the same general results, attended the 
visits to Columbus, the State Capital, Xenia, 
Dayton, &c. 

At Lyons, Michigan, where they were 
invited to attend a convention of people in- 
terested in psychological phenomena — a sort 
of Social Science Congress, differing some- 
what from that presided over by Lord 
Brougham — after gratifying large assemblies 
for three nights they were again prosecuted 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPOET. 159 

for giving performances without a license. 
The justice before whom they were taken 
proved to be a man of sense, and dismissed 
the charge, saying that the law did not 
apply to them, and if what they averred was 
true they should not be persecuted, while, 
if it was an imposture, persecution would 
only spread it the faster. 

At the great lake city of Chicago, Illinois, 
they gave for some time seances limited as 
to numbers, alternating with large assemblies, 
with bindings by ship -riggers, flour tests, 
&c, such as have been described elsewhere. 

This was in April 186.1, and in the midst 
of a seance, a voice speaking through the 
trumpet announced the beginning of the 
bombardment of Fort Sumter, nearly a 
thousand miles distant. An hour or so 
later the same news came in due course by 
telegraph. Had the manifestation ended 
here it might be considered a lucky guess 
or a remarkable coincidence, but the news 



ICO 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



of the events of this famous siege came hour 
by hour, and clay by day, and always in 
advance of the telegraph, owing to the time 
taken by the latter in repeating messages. 
There were two excited crowds in Chicago 
filling the streets, greedy for news, one at 
the telegraph station, another at the rooms 
of the Brothers Davenport ; and the news 
by the Davenport telegraph not only came 
sooner but w r as more accurate. This was 
notably shown when the electric telegraph 
announced that the Confederate floating 
battery had been knocked in pieces by the 
guns of Fort Sumter. The trumpet voice 
denied that any such thing had happened. 
Bets were made on the result, and when 
later news came the Davenports were found 
right, as usual. 

At one of the smaller towns in Illinois 
one of the visitors, determined to know w r ho 
really performed the wonders done in the 
dark circle, brought under his clothes a 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 161 

dark lanthorn, intending to open it when 
the instruments were flying about. The 
light was extinguished, but instead of the 
usual sounds raps were heard upon the 
table calling for the alphabet, and the fact 
of the presence of the dark lanthorn made 
known. Upon its being found and ejected 
the expected manifestations commenced. 

The next night three dark lanthorns were 
brought by as many persons, with the idea 
that if one were suspected and detected the 
others, or certainly one of them, might re- 
main. Light out, and, as before, raps for 
alphabet. Lanthorn! One was 
found and put out. Darkness again. Raps 
again. Lanthorn! A second one 
was found. The same process was repeated, 
and the last lanthorn put out, but not before 
it had burnt the clothes of the man who had 
so dishonourably tried to conceal it. Then 
everything went on as usual. 

The result, of striking a match or show- 
M 



162 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

iug a light suddenly, while the musical 
instruments are circling rapidly in the air, 
I ought to say here, perhaps, is their instant 
release from the controlling power. They 
fly with more or less velocity in the direc- 
tion in which the propelling force was 
acting at the moment. In this way the 
instruments are sometimes broken, and 
persons who may be in the way of their 
flight are seriously injured. This happens 
at times, but in a less degree, when the 
persons holding hands let go in the midst 
of a manifestation. A match was struck at 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, with such results as I 
have mentioned ; but as a test, though dan- 
gerous, it was perfect, for while the instru- 
ments were seen to fall to the floor in 
different directions, no one was seen who 
could have directed their motions. 

At Iowa City, west of the Mississippi, 
handcuffs were proposed instead of ropes, 
and accepted ; but handcuffs are more 






THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 163 

liable to suspicion than ropes, and less 
satisfactory. A clever mechanician could 
make handcuffs which could be opened 
without the key, while ropes, knots, and 
seals everyone can more easily judge of. 

At Davenport, Iowa, 'Lanthorn' was 
spelt out again, and as the person who had 
it would not avow himself, his name was 
spelt out by raps on the table. Of course 
this might have been contrived for effect, 
but it very certainly was not. It was here 
that a man brought a test of his own in- 
vention — plates of tinned iron, with holes 
for the thumb and fingers, which were tied 
in their places by twine ; but, as often hap- 
pens, when his test had been accepted, and 
had failed to detect the imposition he 
expected to defeat, he was still unsa- 
tisfied. 

At Keokuk, Iowa, the mayor compelled 
them to pay a licence-fee of twenty dollars 

M 2 



164 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

a night. ' If you were a party of negro 
minstrels ' said he, c I would give you a 
licence for two dollars. I would ask you 
iifty if I could. I would rather have given 
a hundred than you should have come here; 
and I will give you a hundred out of my 
own pocket if you will go away.' Why ? 

One night at St. Louis, Missouri, in the 
midst of the dark seance, a violent scuffle, 
accompanied by heavy blows, was heard in 
the open space in the middle of the circle, 
while the musical instruments were career- 
ing through the air. A light was struck ; 
and on the floor lay a young man, almost 
senseless, with his head covered with bruises, 
and by his side lay a knife and battered 
trumpet. The Brothers Davenport were 
bound to their chairs, the circle was un- 
broken, except by the absence of this young 
man, who, according to his own story, being 
determined to solve the mystery, had rushed 
forward when he heard the sounds, armed 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 165 

with his knife. A strange contest ensued in 
which he was beaten by some antagonist 
whom he could not clutch, while every cut 
and stab he gave with his knife was at the 
empty air, and he was finally knocked down 
to all appearance with the trumpet that lay 
beside him. 

At Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio 
Eiver, an old steamboat captain tied the 
Brothers with tarred rope so brutally that 
the audience hissed him, and then put on 
iron handcuffs, but was no nearer the solu- 
tion of the mystery. 

Voyaging eastward to the Atlantic sea- 
board, the Brothers Davenport visited Phi- 
ladelphia, in Pennsylvania, the second city 
in the United States. Here they met with 
violent opposition from several quarters — 
from the philosophers, the religious bigots, 
the spiritualists, and the rabble who cared for 
nothing but to make a row. It required 
fifty policemen to keep order. In spite of 



166 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

this the most extraordinary manifestations 
were given, and many curious tests resorted 
to. One night a famous sceptic, in whose 
sagacity the people seemed to have great 
confidence, was chosen with remarkable 
unanimity as one of a committee to examine 
and report upon the manifestations. He had 
come fully prepared. He tied them with 
the greatest care, and then, to make his 
knots secure, wound them with annealed 
wire, which he made fast by twisting with 
a pair of forceps. 

' Are you satisfied ? • asked Ira. 

c Yes, perfectly satisfied.' 

c Will you be satisfied if the manifestations 
take place as usual ? ' 

' yes, certainly ..' 

1 No, you will not ; or if you are your 
friends will not, and before you leave this 
room somebody will charge you with being 
our confederate.' 

The man was indignant at such a sup- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 167 

position. He knew his popularity, and 
believed that if he could be satisfied every- 
body who knew him would be also. He 
was not long in finding the contrary. When 
the audience was passing out Mr. Ira 
heard him having hi^h words and almost 
coming to blows with a man who accused 
him of having aided in what he believed to 
be an imposture. 

At Washington, the Federal capital, the 
Brothers Davenport gave a series of seances 
at Willard's Hall, which were attended by 
most of the distinguished men connected with 
Congress and the Government. One night 
a flourishing personage got elected on the 
committee, who began by making a speech 
to the audience, telling them he had long 
wished for an opportunity to expose this 
gross imposture, by which so many even 
intelligent people had been deceived. At 
last he had the opportunity, and they 
would soon see one more humbug exploded. 



168 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Then he tied the young men until he was 
satisfied. The doors were closed. He was 
watching eagerly very near them. A hand 
came through the aperture, seized him by 
the hair, and pulled his head this way and 
that with more violence than was comfort- 
able. The doors were thrown open, and 
it was evident that the only visible occu- 
pants of the cabinet were bound fast as 
ever. 

The ambitious committee-man was not 
satisfied. He came next night with some 
hundreds of feet of tarred rope, and 
covered them from head to foot with a 
complete network. When it was fastened 
he took out twenty dollars in greenbacks, 
which he promised to give to the Sanitary 
Commission, if unsuccessful. The result 
was the same as before, and the com- 
mission twenty dollars richer by the ope- 
ration. 

In Baltimore, Maryland, the Brothers 




THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 169 

had large and orderly assemblies ; they sub- 
mitted to the most convincing tests, and 
the manifestations were more perfect, 
various, and powerful than in almost any 
other American city. This fact may, I 
believe, be scientifically accounted for. 

In one of the towns of New Jersey a 
committee-man secretly daubed some of the 
knots in the ropes with printer's-ink. When 
the 'phantom hands ' were pushed through 
the opening, one of them was seen playing 
for a moment round his face. The excited 
committee-man turned to the audience to 
explain the circumstance, when he was 
astonished by * a most unoriental roar of 
laughter.' His face was completely smeared 
with the ink. The hands of the Davenports 
were not in the least blackened. 

In visiting some of the wild and lawless 
western villages, ignorance and fanaticism, 
unrestrained by a police, sometimes caused 
disorders, and even riots of a threatening 



170 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



character, as well as more legalised forms 
of persecution. In Kichmond, Indiana, for 
instance — where, from there being a large 
Quaker population, the Davenports expected 
to have a quiet time — there was a most 
violent opposition. When novel tests had 
failed — when creosote secretly rubbed upon 
the instruments could not be smelt upon 
the hands of any, and only violence was 
left to those who opposed the manifestations 
which they could not disprove, the lights 
were put out, benches smashed, women 
frightened, revolvers drawn, and, finally, 
preparations made to administer to the 
Brothers the favourite American remedy for 
any kind of heterodoxy ever since the 
Eevolution of 1776 — tarring and feathering. 
The boys, their father, and Mr. Lacy (who 
then accompanied them as lecturer) were 
rescued from the mob separately by some 
courageous women, who, under the obscurity 
of night, took them away, making them pass 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 171 

for their protectors ; and they all met, 
strangely enough, at the same house, some 
distance in the country, while a raging 
mob was searching for them, with yells 
and threats, until three o'clock in the 
morning. 

As late as November 1860 they were 
threatened with violence, at the Armoury 
Hall, at Coldwater, Michigan. With a 
sword snatched from the wall in one hand, 
and a knife in the other, the elder brother 
kept the mob at bay, until they took refuge 
in the hotel, and when threatened there by 
a larger mob defended the staircase with a 
revolver, fortunately without the necessity 
of bloodshed. A vexatious prosecution for 
using arms in self-defence, and for giving 
an entertainment within two miles of a re- 
ligious meeting, ended in nothing. 

These prosecutions, some of which have 
been alluded to, notably the one attended by 
imprisonment and the release of Mr. Rand 



172 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

at Oswego, were troublesome, costly, and 
vexatious. There were eleven in all, a few 
of which resulted in small fines, and when 
these were resisted, in imprisonment. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 173 



CHAPTER XV. 

AT THE NEW YORK COOPER INSTITUTE. 

Immense Audiences — Report of the ' New York Herald'' — Re- 
port of ''The World' — Another Scene from the ' Herald" 1 — 
A Sporting Circle. — Mayor and Aldermen. — A Seance 
in Brooklyn. — Testimony of Mr. Tice. 

The seances given by the Brothers Daven- 
port at the Cooper Institute, New York, in 
May 1864, were the culmination and crown- 
ing triumphs of their ten years' American 
experience. The Cooper Institute — the gift 
of Mr. Peter Cooper, a wealthy merchant of 
New York, to the city — contains a very large 
free reading-room, library, picture-gallery, 
and school of art. The lecture-room is one 
of the largest in America, and, being cen- 
trally situated, is used for the largest public 
meetings. 



174 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

This immense room, seating more than 
three thousand persons, was densely crowded, 
night after night, to witness the manifesta- 
tions. Full reports were given in the New 
York papers, from which I select, with some 
condensation, an editorial notice, and a full 
and evidently very fair report from the ' New 
York Herald, ' and a fuller report, written 
in a humouristic and sensational style, but 
pretty correct in its details of facts, from 
the leading Democratic organ, the ' New 
York World ' 

From a leader in the ' New York Herald,' 
May 4, 1864:— 

A NEW ERA IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THE 

DAVENPORT BROTHERS. 

As the world grows older it grows wiser. 
Human development has made greater ad- 
vances in every direction within the past 
fifty years than during the live thousand 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 175 

years before. Old things are now passing 
away ; everything is becoming new. Sys- 
tems of science, religion, philosophy, go- 
vernment — all are being revolutionized. We 
are in a transition state from darkness to 
light, and every day brings us nearer to the 
grand new era of the future. 

Here, for example, are the Davenport 
Brothers. They do the most wonderful 
things in public and private. Perhaps their 
performances are more astonishing in a 
private parlour, where deception appears 
impossible, than in a public hall, where 
there may be room for a suspicion of 
trickery. These brothers make musical in- 
struments float about the room. They cause 
spectral arms and hands to become visible 
and tangible. They raise chairs and tables 
from the floor to the ceiling. They illumi- 
nate the room with balls of blazing fire. 
While these phenomena are occurring the 
Brothers remain seated, their hands and feet 



176 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

firmly tied and incapable of motion, even if 
any sleight-of-hand or sleight-of-foot could 
suffice to perform such modern miracles. 
Yet the Davenport Brothers do not attri- 
bute these wonders to spiritualism. They 
say that the power to produce such mani- 
festations has been bestowed upon them; 
and it is perhaps the same occult power, 
differently developed, as that shown in the 
telegraph and the steam-engine. It may be 
a physical power, or a mental power, or a 
moral power, or a combination of them all, 
but certainly it is as yet inexplicable. 

From a report in the c New York Herald/ 
May 1864 :— 

THE DAVENPORT BROTHERS —MORE WONDER- 
FUL MANIFESTATIONS THE WHEAT-FLOUR 

TEST, &C 

The performances of the Davenport Bro- 
thers at the Cooper Institute continue to 



THE BEOTHEES DAVENPOET. 177 

attract general attention and large audiences, 
Last evening there was a very full and fa- 
shionable house, and the manifestations were 
unusually satisfactory. This was undoubt- 
edly the result in a great measure of the 
good order maintained by the spectators, 
almost all of whom were too intelligent to 
interfere with their own enjoyment by un- 
necessary vociferation. Those who made 
the most noise were those whose opinions 
are of the least consequence. 

At the suggestion of Mr. Lacy, who said 
that there had been some talk about wires 
and electricity, glass tumblers were placed 
under the feet of the stools upon which 
stands the magic cabinet or closet. The 
closet was carefully examined inside and 
out, and was found to contain nothing and 
to have no visible connection with any ap- 
paratus. The Davenport Brothers — two 
very intelligent and gentlemanly persons — 
then came forward, and were warmly 
N 



178 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



welcomed. These gentlemen were securely- 
tied, hand and foot, by the committee, and 
fastened to the seats in the closet. The 
committee reported themselves perfectly 
satisfied thus far, and certainly we have 
never seen better tying than that accom- 
plished by the Fire Marshal. The lights 
were turned down. Half-a-dozen musical 
instruments — a guitar, banjo, tambourine, 
violin, trumpet, and bell — were placed in 
the closet by the committee. The two side 
doors of the cabinet were closed and locked, 
also by the Messrs. Baker. Then the centre 
door was pushed to, and in less than a 
second it was bolted upon the inside and 
the trumpet thrown violently out of the 
hole in the door. The committee rushed to 
the closet, the lights were turned up, and 
there sat the Davenports bound as before. 
The astonishment of the audience may be 
imagined. Those who were sceptics a mo- 
ment ago now began to doubt their own 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 179 

conclusions and joined in the general ap- 
plause. 

The manifestations then followed in the 
regular order, the audience remaining very 
quiet and watching everything critically and 
intelligently. The committee seemed to be 
extremely impartial, and briefly reported 
the results of their examinations. A full 
chorus of instruments playing a jig was 
heard inside the closet : the doors w r ere 
hastily opened, and the Davenports had not 
moved. Spectral hands and arms appeared 
at the closet window: the doors were 
opened, and the Davenports were still 
bound. While the doors were partly open 
the instruments were flung out and a hand 
was seen to strike Fire-marshal Baker. 
Still the Davenports were tied. Then, the 
doors being closed for three minutes, the 
Brothers were discovered perfectly un- 
bound. In four minutes more they were 
bound again, better than the committee 



180 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



could have bound them, as these gentlemen 
candidly acknowledged. Then Judge Baker 
entered the closet and sat between the 
Davenports. The doors were shut ; the 
manifestations continued ; and when the 
lights were again turned up, the Judge was 
revealed with a tambourine on his head, 
and reported that the Davenports had not 
•moved a muscle. The Fire Marshal then 
tried the same experiment and made the 
same report. All of the manifestations 
were repeated several times, to satisfy the 
most distrustful. It Avas especially noted 
that in every case the inside bolt of the 
centre door was heard to shoot into its 
socket in less than a second after the door 
was closed. This destroyed the theory that 
the Davenports untie themselves. 

By way of finale, Mr. Lacy suggested 
that wheat-flour should be placed in the 
hands of the Messrs. Davenport while they 
were still tightly tied. This was accord- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 181 

ingly done by the committee, and any of 
the flour that had fallen within the box 
during the operation was neatly brushed 
away. The doors were then closed for the 
last time, and still the manifestations con- 
tinued. Noises were heard, an open hand 
was shown at the window, and the trumpet 
was thrown out. The doors were opened, 
and there stood the Davenport Brothers, 
unbound and holding the wheat-flour in 
their hands. The committee failed to find 
any of the flour about the closet or upon 
the clothes of the Davenports ; and yet they 
could not have avoided spilling some of it 
had they unclosed their hands ever so little. 
For such wonders, and for those performed 
by Mr. Fay in the room above, the hypo- 
thesis of legerdemain or jugglery does not 
seem a reasonable explanation. No modern 
juggler has ever performed such decep- 
tions, if they are deceptions ; and during 
the many years that the Davenports have 



182 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

appeared in public no one — not even the 
professors of Harvard College — has detected 
them in their ' impositions/ as some people 
call the manifestations. 

The following description of another of 
their famous seances, from the i New York 
World/ is in some respects more graphic and 
particular, and records occurrences more 
remarkable, if possible, than the one from 
the ' Herald.' It is also a good illustration 
of the American style of reporting, which 
is in newspapers somewhat like pre-Raphaeli- 
tism in Art. 

From the ' New York World ' : — 

THE NEW SENSATION THE DAVENPORT BRO- 
THERS AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE. 

The Davenport Brothers, known through- 
out the country, appeared last evening at the 
Cooper Institute; and it was announced by 
advertisement that startling wonders, mys- 
terious displays, and unaccountable mani- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 183 

festations v^ould take place in their pre- 
sence. The fame of their feats of diablerie 
had preceded them, and the large hall was 
crowded. 

The Wonderful Closet 

Upon the centre of the platform a plain 
closet, with three doors opening in front, 
from six to eight feet broad and eight to 
ten feet high and two or three feet through, 
was placed upon three stools with four legs 
each. The closet was entirely disconnected 
from either the platform below or the 
column behind, which it did not touch. 

A Preliminary Explanation. 

At eight o'clock the musicians retired, and 
Mr. Lacy, the agent, appeared on the plat- 
form. He made a few remarks, in which he 
said that they did not come here to force 
any religion or philosophy on the audience, 
but simply to show them a series of startling, 



184 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



mysterious, and wonderful manifestations, 
for which they could account as they 
thought proper. One of the conditions 
necessary to this was darkness, and there- 
fore this closet was used ; so that the young 
men might be in the dark, and yet the 
manifestations might be witnessed by the 
audience. 

Choosing the Committee. 

He desired that a committee of two 
should be chosen by the audience, to ex- 
amine all the manifestations and see if there 
was any deception. By vote of the audience, 
Colonel Olcott and Rev. G. T. Flanders were 
selected as a committee. Colonel Olcott is 
a candid and intelligent gentleman, well 
known to many citizens. Rev. Mr. Flanders 
is the present pastor of the Second Univer- 
salist Church, which meets in the hall of 
the Historical Society building, and is well 
known to the public as an eloquent preacher, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 185 

and is respected in the community as a can- 
did, educated, and unimpeachable gentle- 
man. He came to the platform with much 
reluctance, and after many calls. 

These gentlemen then examined the 
closet in every part. The doors being 
thrown open, two seats were discovered, one 
on either side. The doors being shut, an 
opening of less than a foot square, in the 
shape of a diamond, remained near the top. 
The closet was pronounced simply a plain 
affair, with no springs, traps, or machinery 
in any part, and the seats were securely 
fastened. The carefulness of the gentle- 
men in looking under and over and inside 
and around the article excited considerable 
laughter but gave satisfaction. 

The Davenport Brothers now appeared 
on the platform. They looked remarkably 
like each other in almost every particular, 
both quite handsome and between twenty 
and twenty-five years old, with rather long 



lOb A BIOGRAPHY OF 

curly black hair, broad but not high fore- 
heads, dark keen eyes, heavy eyebrows, 
moustache, and ' goatee/ firm-set lips, mus- 
cular though well-proportioned frame. 
They were dressed in black with dress-coats, 
one wearing a watch-chain. 

They are Tied. 

. The committee examine them, they in 
the closet, one on each side ; and the com- 
mittee are a considerable time in tying them 
in every possible way with small ropes. 
Their hands are bound behind them, their 
feet bound together around the ankles, 
below and above the knee ; they are tied to 
the sides of the closet so that they cannot 
stand up, and Colonel Olcott also ties his 
man about the waist. 

Mr. Flanders stated, for himself and his 
colleague, that these gentlemen were tied in 
the most complicated manner possible. 
"With respect to those he had tied he would 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 187 

i 

defy any man with both his hands to untie 
the snarl and complication of knots in half 
an hour. He would state that he had never 
witnessed performances of this character 
before, and had no opinion in regard to them. 
He was not accustomed to make up his 
mind either for or against anything he 
knew nothing about. He had never seen 
these two gentlemen (the Davenports) that 
he was aware of, and had only heard of them 
by rumours through the newspapers. 

A Tyer of Knots Pronounces his Decision. 

A gentleman in the audience said a 
friend of his, acquainted with tying knots, 
would like to see if the men were tied 
securely. The tyer of knots examined the 
men carefully. 

A Voice — ' What does the professor say ?' 

Tyer of Knots — c The knots seem to be 
sufficiently complicated at any rate.' 

Whether they are professionally as well 



188 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

done as an expert might do them deponent 
sayeth not. 

Look Out! 

The gas was partially shut off — not, 
however, bat that everything was plainly 
visible. A bell, trumpet, guitar, hddie, and 
banjo were placed between the Brothers, out 
of reach of each, in centre. The committee 
closed the two side doors, and as Mr. Olcott 
was closing the middle one he was 

Struck in the Face ! 

by what appeared to be a man's hand, and 
many of the audience saw the hand. How 
was that ? The doors were opened, and 
there sat the two men quietly tied. They 
were examined and were secure. Rev. Mr. 
Flanders then proceeded to shut the doors, 
and was quietly adjusting the bolt of the 
middle door, when he suddenly withdrew it, 
and turned about with a start. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 189 

Mr. Flanders — ' I will state to the au- 
dience that, on reaching to adjust the bolt, 
my fingers were severely grasped.' 

Hardly were the words out of his mouth, 
when, rap ! thump ! out of the opening the 
heavy trumpet right against and over Mr. 
Flanders' head on to the platform. (Little 
screams from the audience.) Mr. Lacy, the 
agent, opened the doors and turned on the 
gas as quickly as possible, and the two 
men were sitting, each on his side, calm 
and fast. 

Colonel Olcott — C I will state that this 
trumpet was thrown out with such force 
that the mouth is bent.' 

Kev. Mr. Flanders (with his hand to 
his forehead) — ' Fin afraid it was bent on 
my skull.' (Laughter.) 

While the doors were being shut again 
a hand passed quickly out twice before the 
middle door, and the audience saw it. Then 
a bell was thrown out of the opening, and 



190 A BIOGRAPHY OE 

the doors being suddenly opened the two 
men were sitting still and secure. 

Whispers — ' There's no humbug about 
that ! ' ' Oh ! oh ! did you see the hand ? ' 

The doors were shut, and a hand ap- 
peared plain and palpable at the opening, 
shaking its fingers. 

The agent looked into the middle door, 
and a hand caught him by the beard. It 
had a man's wristband and coat-sleeve. 

Mirabile Dictu ! 

The doors were closed and the committee 
took seats. Tremendous knocks were heard 
at the back, side, front, and top of the closet. 
Two hands — not ghostly and shadowy, but 
plainly flesh and blood — appeared out of the 
opening and shook the fingers. The guitar 
and the violin were heard, as though being 
tuned. Mr. Flanders stood on one side, and 
Mr. Olcott on the other, so that there was 
no part of the closet but what was visible as 



THE BKOTHEES DAVENPORT. 191 

disconnected from the platform or column. 
Suddenly a band of musicians seemed to be 
playing inside the closet ; there was the 
violin, the guitar, and sometimes the banjo 
or bell. A very quick jig was struck up 
and continued a little time, and while it was 
playing a hand came at the opening. Finally 
the spirits were disgusted with the music, 
and pitched the banjo violently out of the 
opening, so that it passed beyond the plat- 
form against a gentleman's head. The 
spirits were evidently excessively disorderly 
— they were mad, and there was no method 
in their madness. First they slammed the 
sides of the closet as though they would 
knock it sky-high, so to speak, then they 
played spasmodically on the instruments, 
and, wildest of all, they must dash a banjo 
against a quiet gentleman's head with a force 
greater than Dan Bryant exerts in his most 
hilarious efforts. The doors were opened 
quickly, and the young men were discovered 



192 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



sitting, apparently in meditative mood, tied 
fast. It was noticed, however, that they 
were in perspiration, but the closet was 
close. 

The Severest Test. 

Mr. Flanders then sat in the closet 
between the two young men, one hand tied 
to each man, so that any motion of body or 
limb would be felt by him. 

The doors were shut and dead silence 
reigned. There was heard the sound of 
voices in the closet ; then came a great' 
racket — it seemed to be a wreck of matter 
and a crash of worlds ; the instruments 
were tuned. 

The doors being opened, there sat the 
young man and Mr. Flanders smiling, with 
a banjo on his head. He was untied, and 
coming out took a bell out of his bosom. 

Relating Jus Experience. 
He said, while in the closet, what had 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 193 

occurred had been so incredible, that he was 
justified in a degree of hesitation in making 
the statement. He felt hands over his face, 
upon his breast, back, shoulders ; his nose 
was held tightly, his ears pulled ; he was 
struck with instruments, and all the while 
he had his hands on the young men's legs, 
and his fingers stretched so as to touch their 
bodies, and they were immovable. Of 
course there was no deception here, and, 
as he should not like to be suspected of col- 
lusion, he should be glad if some other 
person would take the same place. 

The Spirits Tie and Untie Knots. 

When the doors were opened again the 
ropes were lying in a pile between the young 
men, and they walked out free. They were 
shut up again, and in four minutes the doors 
were opened and they were securely tied, 
but not as they were at first. The ropes 
o 



194 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

first used were recognised as the same now 
on the young men. 

Again the young men were shut up, and 
there was knocking and music, and appear- 
ance of hands and arms : some swore that 
it was often the hand of a lady. 

A Voice — c Show us their faces.' 

The Agent — ' Faces not unfrequently 
appear.' 

Voice — c Let's see one then.' 

The Agent (philosophically) — ' They are 
not mine to show.' 

Voice — ' Can't you catch that hand ? ' 

Acting on the suggestion, both of the 
committee grasped the hands as they ap- 
peared. 

Voice — ' Were the hands cold ? ' 

Mr. Olcott — ' No ; they were warm and 
moist.' 

Mr. Flanders said he had tried to hold 
it, but though his grip was very strong he 
could not do it. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 195 

Once, while the middle door was open, 
the trumpet, in full sight of the audience, 
shot into the air in the direction of Mr. 
Olcott's head. 

The l World ' also gives a report of a 
private seance, or dark circle, with Mr. 
Ira Davenport and Mr. William M. Fay, 
accompanied by the same kind of manifesta- 
tions as those which have so much 
astonished the savans, the literati, and the 
highest circles of English society. 

The following extract from a report in 
the ' New York Herald,' giving an account 
of the closing scenes of another seance at 
the Cooper Institute, is not, I am assured, 
an exaggeration : — 

6 The brothers now re-enter the cabinet, 
and in a few minutes, apparently without 
earthly assistance, the doors are opened, 
and the youths appear more firmly tied 
than ever. Mr. Bradbury so reports. Mr. 
Conklin says, vaguely, " I can't see how 
o 2 



196 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

that's done." A gentleman proposes, that 
as the Brothers might slip their hands out 
of the ropes and in again, that thread, 
instead of cord, be used to tie them. There 
was at this time indescribable confusion 
among the audience. Mr. Conklin is urged 
to get into the box with the Brothers and 
find out the deception, if he can. " Get 
mto the box, Conklin." • " That's it ; go in, 
Conk." "Go in, Conk." Mr. Conklin 
looks imploringly at the audience; he is 
evidently terribly confused. A lull in the 
cries and noises enables him to be heard. 
" Gentlemen," he cries, " be men and 
ladies." This speech was hailed with 
another general outburst of merriment, in 
the midst of which Mr. Conklin enters the 
miraculous cabinet, and is last seen before 
the doors close sitting between the Bro- 
thers, with a hand on the shoulder of each. 
As the doors closed the uproar among 
the audience was redoubled. u Goodbye, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 197 

Conklin," cries a stentorian voice at the 
back part of the hall ; " I smell brim- 
stone," cries another ; " How — are — you 
— Conklin ? " ejaculates still another voice. 
And now the audience are hushed in silence, 
as strange voices inside the cabinet are 
heard. There is a drumming on the guitar, 
and the bell is rung. In a few moments 
the doors are opened, and Conklin comes 
forth like a ghost from a sepulchre. 
The Brothers are seen still tied fast, and 
apparently unchanged in their position in 
the slightest degree. The audience are 
clamorous for a report of Conklin's ex- 
perience while with the goblins. He says, 
u I had a hand on the shoulder of each. 
They did not move a muscle, or I should 
have felt it ; and, by the Eternal ! I don't 
believe they did move. But I got a crack 
on my head from the violin — that I know." 
(Boisterous laughter.) Once more are the 
doors shut, and in the shadowy darkness a 



198 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

long white spectral human arm is seen 
slowly moving through the aperture. The 
audience is hushed. A sensation is created. 
There is something supernatural in the 
appearance of this ghostly-white arm. But 
the inevitable Conklin is dauntless — he is 
not scared. He rushes to seize the arm, 
and a sturdy red hand at the end of it 
seizes his own hand and drags the un- 
fortunate man's arm clear into the aperture 
with a grip that made him wince with pain. 
Conklin acknowledged that that was a 
hand, " and a mighty powerful one, too." 
And now a terrible racket is heard in the 
cabinet : the spirits seem to have broken 
loose, and are raising a miniature pandemo- 
nium. Thundering, rapping, tumultuous 
shaking of the doors and sides of the 
cabinet, loud bellringing, the clanging of 
musical instruments, and other noises of 
almost every sort create a disturbance last- 
ing some minutes. Ever and anon the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 199 

spectral arm appears. The audience be- 
come infected with the tempest of dis- 
cordant sounds, and help along the infernal 
din by all kinds of cries. Once when the 
mysterious arm appeared, a masculine voice 
cried, " Stick your knife in that arm, Conk- 
lin." (Sensation.) Conklin was no such 
brute. There were vociferous cries of 
" Open the door," u Open the door," " Oh ! 
let 'em rip," " Order," "Order," "Order! " 
Mr. Lacy appeals to the audience to be 
quiet. The ghostly hand spasmodically 
rings the bell at the aperture. " Look out 
for your head, Conklin." A regular shindy 
is struck up ; the violin is played vividly, 
the tambourine is banged savagely, the bell 
is rung vociferously, and every few mo- 
ments that strange white arm is thrust out 
and in the aperture, like the arm of a 
corpse through a new-made grave amid 
gleams of moonlight. " Oh, humbug ! " 
ejaculates a hardened sceptic near us. 



200 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

" You're a philosopher/' deprecatingly 
observes a careful and deeply-interested 
watcher of the entire phenomena. The 
cries to " Open the door ! " now became 
unanimous and boisterous all over the 
house. Mr. Lacy finally opened the doors, 
and out came, pellmell, the guitar, 
trumpet, tambourine, and we don't know 
what else ; while the Brothers were seen 
still tied as tight and fast as ever, and 
sitting as composedly as if nothing had 
happened. Conklin, perfectly dumb- 
founded, exclaimed, " Gentlemen, this is 
beyond my comprehension ! " ' 

During their triumphant season at New 
York, so fully and vividly reported by the 
leading journals of that city, they were in- 
vited ohp Jay to visit Mr. John Morrissey, a 
well-known sporting man and prizefighter 
— perhaps the most successful and popular 
member of what used to be called the 
f Fancy ' in America. He fought Heenan ; he 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 201 

backed other champions : he has his horses 
on the racecourse ; he used to keep a faro 
bank ; he speculates in stocks and gold in 
Wall Street. 

The Brothers Davenport were naturally 
curious to see so distinguished a character, 
and they aver that many clergymen have 
treated them with less politeness and kind- 
ness than was shown to them by Mr. M. and 
his friends, and on other occasions by pub- 
licans and sinners. The object of the visit 
was to arrange for a private seance for Mr. 
Morrissey and his friends. It was readily 
agreed to. A sailor was brought by one 
party, who spent an hour and a half in tying 
the Brothers with tarred rope, until they 
were covered as with a net, and heavy bets 
were made that they would or would not be 
untied. This was the only manifestation 
they cared for. Everything was conducted 
with as much scrutiny as the pending in- 
terests demanded, but also with a fairness 



202 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

that would have shamed more pretentious 
people. When the lights were put out a 
variety of manifestations were given. Then 
the knots were all untied in fifteen minutes, 
to the satisfaction of winners and losers. 

A private seance was also given to the 
Mayor and Common Council of the City of 
New York, who will, I trust, pardon me 
for having given precedence to the more 
piquant if less dignified one attended by 
Mr. John Morrissey and his respectable 
confreres. 

I close this long but I believe interesting 
chapter with the following statement, pub- 
lished in the New York papers : — 

The Brothers 1 Hands Blacked. 

We have had furnished us a statement 
made by Mr. Thomas S. Tice, an unbeliever, 
respecting certain tests applied by him 
while the Brothers were exhibiting in 



THE BROTHEES DAVENPORT. 203 

Brooklyn. Mr. Tice acted as one of the 
committee on the occasion referred to. 

' Mr. Tice's Statement. 

1 1 took a piece of chamois skin well filled 
with lampblack, previously prepared for the 
purpose, and, unknown to the Brothers, 
while examining the cords that tied their 
hands, I smeared them over as well as I 
could, even rubbing the black upon the 
wrists, so that if it were their hands that 
appeared at the aperture it would show the 
smearing I gave them. I was at the side 
of the cabinet when a hand appeared at the 
opening which I did not see ; but I imme- 
diately enquired if there was any black upon 
it, when it was stated that the hand was a 
beautiful clean white hand and without 
any trace of black upon it, and there were 
at least a dozen people in the front row 
watching to see if they could detect any 
black upon the hand whatever. 



204 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

' Again, after both of us that were on the 
committee had been inclosed with them, a 
hand appeared at the opening — as clean and 
perfect a hand as could be. In fact the 
hand looked quite fleshy, and as if it be- 
longed to some young lady, and not like 
the Brothers' hands, with veins and sinews 
showing very plainly ; and, in conclusion, I 
will only add that I cannot account for the 
mysteries that appear in connection with 
the Brothers and their wonderful cabin et.' 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 205 



CHAPTER XVI. 

VISIT TO ENGLAND. 

Character of the English — Past and Present Beliefs — The 
Mission of the Brothers Davenport — Their Confederates 
— The first Seance in London — The Press in a Diffi- 
culty, and How they Got out of it — Report of the ' Morn- 
ing Post'— 1 The Times'—' The Herald. ' 

Aeter the ten years of strange and won- 
derful experiences in America, here truth- 
fully but briefly and imperfectly recorded, 
and while a sanguinary war is raging over 
their native land, the Brothers Davenport, 
after a visit to the British- American Pro- 
vinces, elsewhere spoken of, received and 
obeyed the direction given them to cross the 
Atlantic to their ancient fatherland, the 
birthplace of their mother, and in which the 
dust of their ancestry reposes, to continue 
in Britain and in Europe a mission in whose 



206 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

beneficent purposes they have an undoubt- 
ing faith, and which may carry them around 
the world. 

England, the country in which they would 
naturally first continue the work so long and 
faithfully pursued in America, is probably 
one of the most incredulous, materialistic, 
practical, and impracticable countries in the 
World. Hard, scientific, unimpressible, and 
unimaginative, devoted to precedent and re- 
specting authority, the English people, as a 
rule, have long since adopted, and are now 
firmly settled in, the belief that there is and 
can be nothing beyond the range of ordinary 
experience. Two centuries ago they be- 
lieved in witchcraft, and burned or hanged 
wizards and witches in abundance. Three 
centuries ago they believed in miracles — 
that is, they believed that miracles might be, 
and often were, worked in the later as well 
as in the earlier Christian centuries. That 
faith still exists over a large part of Europe ; 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 207 

but in England it died out after the Refor- 
mation, and has not been revived. To an 
Englishman at this day a miracle, such as 
his ancestors three or four hundred years ago 
believed in with an earnest and lively faith, 
and such as the people of three-fourths of 
Europe still believe in, seems an utter ab- 
surdity. It is opposed to his science, and 
it shocks his common-sense. It is stuff and 
nonsense. In the days of Shakspeare, the 
ghost of the Royal Dane in Hamlet, the 
dread spectre of the murdered Banquo in 
Macbeth, and the terrible vision that froze 
the blood of Richard III., were very real 
things ; now they are matters of ridicule, 
and at the most appeal only to some chil- 
dish remnant of traditional superstition. 
The Englishman has long since made up his 
mind that what he calls the laws of nature 
are, in this steam-engine-driven and gas-en- 
lightened age, never violated: the Society 
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and 



208 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

the ' Penny Cyclopaedia ' settled all that 
long ago. 

If the Brothers Davenport have really any 
mission — any proper and worthy business — 
in England, it is to meet on its own low 
ground, and conquer by appropriate means, 
the hard materialism and scepticism of 
England. The first step to knowledge is 
-to be convinced of ignorance : small things 
often lead to great results. 

The fall of an apple or the swing pf a 
pendulum may suggest an investigation 
into the most profound laws of the physical 
world. If the manifestations given by the 
aid of the Brothers Davenport shall prove 
to the intellectual and scientific classes in 
England that there are forces — and intelli- 
gent forces, or powerful intelligences — ber 
yond the range of their philosophies, and that 
what they consider physical impossibilities 
are readily accomplished by invisible and 
to them unknown intelligences, a new uni- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 209 

verse will be opened to human thought and 
investigation. 

I say, if they have any real mission ; for 
to come here as mere jugglers, doing tricks 
by sleight-of-hand and aid of confederates, 
denying that they are so done, would be 
not only a mercenary, base imposture, but, 
in their case, the most infamous of false- 
hoods, and the most horrible of perjuries. 
If they say falsely, they and those who are 
with them, that they have no voluntary 
agency in the production of the phenomena 
described in these pages ; if they are try- 
ing to palm off as preternatural or super- 
natural, the results of mere trick and col- 
lusion, they are the most base and infa- 
mous wretches in the world, compared with 
whom a common forger, an ordinary felon, 
is a man of honour and a gentleman. I 
cannot put this case more strongly than I 
wish to put it, or than it ought to be put. 
Penal servitude for life at Norfolk Island 
p 



210 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



would be a mild punishment for so detest- 
able an outrage. 

In good faith, as I believe with no shadow 
of doubt, the Brothers Davenport embarked 
from the city of New York on the 27th of 
August, 1864, bringing with them, in con- 
sequence of a nervous debility in Mr. Wil- 
liam Davenport, a reinforcement in Mr. 
William M. Fay, who is not to be con- 
founded with one H. Melville Fay — said, 
upon I know not what kind of authority, 
to have been detected in attempting to pro- 
duce similar manifestations, or what might 
pass for them, in Canada. They were 
accompanied by Mr. Palmer, widely known 
as an impressario or business manager in 
the operatic and dramatic world, to whom, 
as an experienced agent, was confided the 
business and pecuniary portion of their 
undertaking — a matter of such obvious 
necessity that it needs neither apology nor 
explanation. To these were added Mr. J. 



THE BKOTHEES DAVENPORT. 211 

B. Ferguson, a gentleman of education and 
position, formerly a clergyman of Nash- 
ville, the capital of Tennessee, where he was 
highly respected and esteemed. Mr. Fer- 
guson was born in the valley of Virginia, 
but emigrated early in life west of the 
Alleghanies. He is now forty-seven years 
old, and is greatly esteemed by those who 
know him best as a man of integrity and 
honour, of high religious principle, purity 
of character, deep thought, and eloquent 
expression. Distinctively American, of the 
southern and western type, with striking 
American peculiarities, he has yet, I believe, 
made a very favourable impression upon 
Englishmen. In the war that has con- 
vulsed his native country, and desolated 
the State in which he was born and in 
which he resided, he has taken the part of 
a peacemaker, and in that capacity has 
visited Richmond, and once before crossed 
the Atlantic. 

p 2 



212 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

It is very unlikely that such a man, 
holding such a character, standing in such 
a position, so gifted, honoured and beloved, 
would lend himself to a mean and mise- 
rable imposture. In another chapter, Mr. 
Ferguson has given his own statement of 
the motives which have induced him to 
accompany the Davenport Brothers, to 
watch over them, and be the intellectual 
manager of the seances, in which powers 
and forces unknown to and unrecognised 
by science are demonstrated by incontro- 
vertible facts. 

This party arrived safely at Glasgow, 
Sept. 9th, and on the 11th reached the 
great metropolis. Their first private seance 
was given at the residence of Mr. Dion 
Boucicault, the well-known dramatic author 
and actor — author of * London Assurance/ 
' the Young Actress/ ' Colleen Bawn,' 
1 Streets of London,' and a score of enter- 
taining and delightful comedies and dramas, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 213 

in which it is hard to say whether his 
merits as dramatist or actor were more 
conspicuous. I speak in this special man- 
ner of Mr. Boucicault as a matter of 
justice, because he has shown a moral 
courage equal to his ability, and because I 
shall be indebted to his hand for one of 
the clearest descriptive statements of the 
nature of these manifestations that has 
ever been written. 

This first and very important seance, 
given Sept. 28, 1864, was attended by 
several gentlemen connected with the lead- 
ing daily newspapers of London, and other 
distinguished men of science and letters. 
It would have been difficult to select a 
company better able to examine the phe- 
nomena presented, or better qualified to 
make a proper report to the public. In the 
case of the production of a new farce, the 
opening of a donkey-show, or a prize-fight 
for the belt of the champion of England, 



214 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

the reports of these gentlemen, who stand 
high upon the staffs of their respective 
journals, would have been published in the 
usual form ; but in this case, where occult 
powers and hidden forces of the universe 
were in question, every daily paper except- 
ing the ' Morning Post ' published the ac- 
counts which were given as anonymous 
communications. This is not at all to be 
wondered at. Considering the obstinate 
incredulity of the public mind, it is won- 
derful that the editors of these leading 
organs of public opinion published them at 
all. It may be supposed that they thought 
the facts reported to them too marvellous 
to be vouched for, but also too striking to 
be passed over in silence. 

I propose to copy from these reports so 
much as may be pertinent to the case and 
interesting to the reader, taking the liberty 
to condense, by omitting superfluous por- 
tions, unnecessary repetitions ; and first the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 215 

article from the ' Morning Post,' which ap- 
pears to have been written by one of its 
staff editorial. 

From the London ' Morning Post/ Sept. 
29, 1864 :— 

6 Extraordinary Manifestations. 

c Yesterday evening, in the front drawing- 
room of a house in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of Portland-place, a select number 
of persons were invited to witness some 
strange manifestations which took place in 
the presence, if not by the agency, of three 
gentlemen lately arrived from America. 
The party consists of two brothers named 
Davenport, twenty-four and twenty-five 
years of age, and a Mr. Fay, a gentleman 
born in the States, but we believe of German 
origin. They are accompanied by Mr. H. 
D. Palmer, a gentleman long and favour- 
ably known in New York in connection with 
operatic matters, and by a Dr. Ferguson, 



216 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



who explains the nature of the manifesta- 
tions about to be presented, but who does 
not venture to give any explanation of them. 
It should be stated at the outset that the 
trio, who appear to be gifted in so extraor- 
dinary a manner, do not lay claim to any 
particular physical, psychological, or moral 
power. All they assert is that in their pre- 
sence certain physical manifestations take 
place. The spectator is, of course, at liberty 
to draw any inference he pleases. They 
invite the most critical examination (com- 
patible with certain conditions to be ob- 
served), and those who witness the manifes- 
tations are at liberty to take all needful 
precautions against fraud or deception. 

4 The party invited to witness the mani- 
festations last night consisted of some twelve 
or fourteen individuals, all of whom are ad- 
mitted to be of considerable distinction in 
the various professions with which they are 
connected. The majority had never pre- 



THE BKOTHERS DAVENPORT. 217 

viously witnessed anything of the kind. All, 
however, were determined to detect, and, if 
possible, expose any attempt at deception. 
The Brothers Davenport are slightly-built, 
gentleman-like in appearance, and about the 
last persons in the world from whom any 
great muscular performances might be ex- 
pected. Mr. Fay is apparently a few years 
older, and of more robust constitution. 7 

The writer proceeds to describe the cabi- 
net, and says the bolt of ' the middle door 
was shut by some invisible agency from the 
inside.' The Brothers are securely tied. 
1 Instantly on the centre door being closed 
the bolt was secured inside, and hands were 
clearly observed through the opening. A 
gentleman present was invited to pass his 
hand through the opening, and it was 
touched by the hands several times.' Music 
was heard ; the doors flew open ; the Bro- 
thers are seen to be firmly secured ; the 
doors are * closed by persons who, when 



218 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



doing so, were touched by invisible hands, 
and the noise of undoing the cords was dis- 
tinctly heard.' ' After an interval of two 
minutes, the Brothers were found securely 
bound with the same cords, the ends of the 
rope being some distance from their hands.' 
A gentleman sits in the cabinet with his 
hands tied to the knees of the two Daven- 
ports, whose hands were bound behind their 
backs, and to the bench, and their feet 
securely fastened. The gentleman stated 
that ' the instant the door was closed, hands 
were passed over his face and head, his hair 
was gently pulled, and the whole of the 
musical instruments played upon, the bells 
violently rung close to his face, and the 
tambourine beat time on his head. Even- 
tually the instruments were thrown behind 
him and rested between his shoulders and 
the back of the cabinet.' A gas-burner and 
two candles were burning. 

Here are the facts— two Davenports and 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 219 

a witness in a box scarcely larger than 
needed to contain them, and all securely 
bound — yet observe what happened : — 

A dark circle was then formed, the 
Brothers bound to chairs, and the whole 
company, including Mr. Ferguson and Mr. 
Fay, taking hold of hands. ; The instant 
the lights were extinguished the musical 
instruments appeared to be carried all about 
the room. The currents of air which they 
occasioned in their rapid transit were felt 
upon the faces of all present. The bells 
were loudly rung; the trumpet made knocks 
on the floor, and the tambourine seemed to 
be running round the room jingling with all 
its might. At the same time tiny sparks 
were observed as if passing from south to 
west.' Several persons were lightly, and one 
(the representative of the 'Times,') severely 
struck with the passing instruments. Lights 
were struck from time to time, and the 
Brothers always found securely bound. 



220 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Mr. Fay was now bound to one of the 
chairs, with his hands firmly tied behind 
him. As soon as the light was extinguished, 
a whizzing noise was heard. ' It's off/ said 
Mr. Fay, meaning his coat, and on striking a 
light, his coat was no longer on, but lying 
on the floor, and his hands were still 
tied together behind him ! 4 Astonishing 
though this appeared to be, what followed 
was more extraordinary still. Dr. Fergu- 
son requested a gentleman present to take 
off his coat and place it on the table. This 
was done, the light was extinguished, a re- 
petition of the whizzing noise was heard, 
and the strange coat was found upon Mr. 
Fay, whose hands and feet were still 
securely bound, and his body tied almost 
immoveably to the chair.' Several other 
manifestations were made, and some while 
the Davenport Brothers and Mr. Fay, in- 
stead of being bound, were held by those 
present, and all with similar results. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 221 

This manifestation of the taking off a 
man's coat, and putting on another man's, 
both garments being intact, with the wrists 
closelv bound together behind the back, and 
the person securely tied to a chair, is un- 
doubtedly one of the most astounding ever 
given. It is simply what is called a physical 
impossibility. It is as if two links of a 
chain should be separated without a frac- 
ture and then restored to their places. That 
it was done on this occasion, and has been 
done scores, perhaps hundreds of times, 
there is no doubt whatever. 

All this was done, it will also be observed, 
not in the presence of ignorant and credulous 
persons, but in a select company, which 
included some of the sharpest minds in 
England ; not in a prepared theatre, but in 
a gentleman's drawing-room, where there 
could have been no deception had it been in 
any case possible. 

After giving the details, which I have 



222 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

condensed, because they will be still more 
minutely given in other statements which are 
to follow, the writer in the i Morning Post ' 
makes the following observations : — 

' The seance lasted more than two hours, 
during which time the cabinet was minutely 
inspected, the coats examined to ascertain 
whether they were fashioned so as to favour 
a trick, and every possible precaution taken 
to bind the hands and feet of the persons 
whose presence appeared to be essential to 
the development of the manifestations. 

' It may be asserted that all the illustra- 
tions above enumerated can be traced to 
clever conjuring. Possibly they may t or it 
is possible that some new physical force can 
be engendered at will to account for what 
appears on the face of it absolutely unac- 
countable. All that can be asserted is, that 
the displays to which we have referred took 
place on the present occasion under condi- 
tions and circumstances that preclude the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 223 

presumption of fraud. It is true that dark- 
ness is in some cases an essential condition, 
but darkness does not necessarily imply 
deception. But, putting aside the cabinet 
manifestations, there is abundance left to 
excite curiosity and challenge the attention 
of the scientific. Learning, we know, is 
not a limited quantity; it is inexhaustible 
for all mankind, and here is a field for the 
investigation of the scientific world. In the 
present state of knowledge upon the subject of 
occult forces, dependent more or less upon the 
will, all that can be said is, that the mani- 
festations of Messrs. Davenport and Mr. Fay 
appear to be altogether inexplicable. 

1 In a little time we believe it is their 
intention to give seances at the Egyptian 
Hall or some other suitable place, when the 
public will be afforded an opportunity of 
witnessing some of the astonishing feats of 
which we have given an outline. For the 
present it is sufficient to say that they 



224 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



invite the strictest scrutiny on the part of 
men of science, and that, whatever be the 
theory involved, they repudiate any active 
agency in the production of the extraordi- 
nary manifestations which take place in 
their presence. It is perhaps well for them 
that they were not in the flesh a century 
and a half ago, as, in the then state of 
human knowledge and social enlightenment, 
they would unquestionably have been con- 
ducted to Smithfield, and burnt as necro- 
mancers of the most dangerous type/ 

The writer of this article, in the most 
fashionable and aristocratic journal in Eng- 
land, no doubt conferred with the gentle- 
men of the press and other cool and careful 
observers then present, and has given their 
ideas and observations as well as his own. 
It has every appearance of being a fair, 
candid, and intelligent statement, and the 
editor of the ' Morning Post' did not shrink 
from the responsibility of giving it a suit- 
able place in his journal. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 225 

The e Times' — the leading journal of Eng- 
land, Europe, and the world, ' The Thun- 
derer,' the paper that more than any other 
can make and unmake fortunes and reputa- 
tions, which wields so great a power, that 
it may be hoped its conductors never forget 
that great power involves a corresponding 
responsibility — the { Times ' is said to have 
been represented on this occasion by one 
of its ablest writers, but its account of the 
seance is c From a Correspondent.' It may 
seem strange that the ' Times ' did not pub- 
lish a report of the personal observations of 
one of the most trusted and matter-of-fact 
writers on its staff, but it is well to be 
wary of impossibilities. 

The ' Correspondent ' of the \ Times,' 
September 30th, says : — ' I was present at a 
seance, at the house of Mr. Dion Bouci- 
cault, whose party comprised several persons 
known in the literary and artistic world. 
Having arrived rather late, I missed some 
Q 



226 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

of the earlier " experiments," which seem to 
have been extremely curious. 

1 When I entered the room devoted to 
the " manifestations " I found it occupied by 
a number of persons who attentively listened 
to a strange discordant concert held within 
a wardrobe placed at the end furthest from 
the door. When the sounds had ceased the 
wardrobe was opened, and three compart- 
ments were discovered, two of which were 
occupied by the Brothers Davenport, bound 
hand and foot with strong cords, like the 
most dangerous malefactors. The centre 
compartment held the musical instruments, 
and on each side of this sat the corded 
brothers. The ostensible theory is that 
the Davenports, bound as they were, pro- 
duced a combination of noises, compared 
to which the performance of the most ob- 
trusive German band that ever awakened 
the wrath of a Babbage is the harmony of 
the spheres. The cords are examined, the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 227 

wardrobe is closed, the instruments are re- 
placed, and presently, through an aperture 
in the centre door, a trumpet is hurled with 
violence. The wardrobe is reopened and 
there are the Brothers Davenport corded as 
before. 

' A change takes place in the manner of 
the performance. Hitherto the brothers 
have remained incarcerated in this box, 
while the audience are at liberty. They 
now leave the wardrobe and take their place 
in the middle of the room, where they are 
firmly bound to their chairs. The gentle- 
man who officiates as their lecturer or 
spokesman even offers to drop sealing-wax 
on the knots, and requests any one of the 
company to impress it with his own seal. 
On the evening of my visit this offer was 
not accepted, but the fault, if any, lay with 
the investigators. When the lights had 
been extinguished, and as we were all seated 
round the room with hands joined, at the 

Q2 



228 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

request of the lecturer, a most extraordi- 
nary " manifestation " took place. . The air 
was filled with the sound of instruments 
which we had seen laid upon a table, but 
which now seemed to be flying about the 
room, playing as they went, without the 
smallest respect to the heads of the visitors. 
Now a bell jingled close to your ear, now 
a guitar was struck immediately over your 
head, while every now and then a cold wind 
passed across the faces of the whole party. 
Sometimes a smart blow was administered, 
sometimes the knee was patted by a myste- 
rious hand ; divers shrieks from the mem- 
bers of the company indicating the side on 
which the more tangible " manifestations " 
had taken place. A candle having been 
lighted, the brothers were seen still bound 
to their chairs, while some of the instru- 
ments had dropped into the laps of the vi- 
sitors. I myself had received a blow on the 



THE BEOTHERS DAVENPORT. 229 

face from a floating guitar which drew 
enough blood to necessitate the employment 
of towel and sponge. 

' A new experiment was now made. Dark- 
ness having regained its supremacy, one of 
the brothers expressed a desire to be relieved 
of his coat. Eeturning light showed him 
in his shirt-sleeves, though his hands were 
still firmly bound behind his chair. It was 
now stated that he was prepared to put on 
the coat of any one of the company willing 
to " loan " that article of attire, and an as- 
senting gentleman having been found, the 
coat, after a short interval of darkness, was 
worn in proper fashion by a person for 
whom it had not been designed by the tailor. 
Finally, the brothers desired a release, and 
one of the company, certainly not an accom- 
plice, requested that the rope might fall 
into his lap. During the interval of dark- 
ness a rushing sound as of swiftly drawn 



230 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



cords was audible, and the ropes reached the 
required knees, after striking the face of the 
person in the next chair. 

' Such are the chief phenomena. To sum 
up the essential characteristics of the exhi- 
bition, it is sufficient to state that the bro- 
thers, when not shut up in the wardrobe, 
are bound while the candles are alight, per- 
form their miracles in the dark, and on the 
return of light are found to be bound as 
before. The investigators into the means 
of operation have to ascertain whether the 
brothers are able to release themselves and 
resume their straitened condition during the 
intervals of darkness, and whether, even if 
this is practicable, they can, without assist- 
ance, produce the effects described. 1 — Times, 
Sept. 13. 

A clear, brief, evidently honest statement 
by a man who would have exposed the 
slightest indication of imposture had there 
been any to expose. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 231 

The ' Morning Herald ' and ' Standard ' 
were represented at the party of Mr. Bou- 
cicault, it is stated, by one of the able 
writers of their regular staff, but the report, 
following the prudent example of the lead- 
ing journal, is given in a communication 
4 to the Editor,' over the signature of ' In- 
credulous Odi.' 

Having given a careful statement of the 
facts, it will be sufficient to copy a few of 
this clever writer's observations, and his 
c views of a puzzle which, whether it be 
physical or metaphysical, is likely to cause 
much and various speculation ere it be 
finally, if ever, solved.' 

Mr. ' Incredulous Odi ' was there at the 
beginning. He c examined the cabinet and 
found it too simple in construction to 
admit of any concealed machinery. One 
of the gentlemen engaged in tying the 
Brothers Davenport was a nautical gentle- 
man, and 'profound in the matter of knots. 



232 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

He had no doubt of the perfect rigidity of 
his fastenings, nor had the other gentle- 
man, or any of the company who examined 
the complicated ligatures, which, passing 
through holes perforated in the bench, and 
connecting the ancles with the wrists of 
the patients, served to render all free mo- 
tion, at any rate of arms or feet, an 
impossibility. 

c Dr. Ferguson told us that he would 
advance no theory or explanation of what 
was about to happen, and begged us not to 
discuss the causes of what we saw or heard, 
but content ourselves with the attitude of 
simple and candid observers. Now, let me 
say what did happen, so far as my own 
observation is concerned. As the doctor 
had told us, the bolt of the middle door 
was heard to be drawn from inside ; hands 
then appeared at the lozenge- shaped aper- 
ture, one from each side of the cabinet, as 
it appeared, and jigged flittingly in front 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 233 

of the curtain, which was thrust slightly 
back. The hands were in a semi-obscurity, 
the gas by which the room was lighted 
having been slightly lowered, and the arms 
belonging to them not being visible from 
the smallness of the aperture, they looked 
ghostly enough to elicit a set of little awe- 
struck ejaculations from the ladies present/ 
But this \ Incredulous Odi ' is not con- 
tent with stating the facts. He thinks it 
necessary to offer a theory by way of ac- 
counting for them. He thinks that if the 
brothers, bound in the cabinet and watched 
by a third person sitting between them, 
could have got only partially loose, with- 
out the use of their hands, thev might 
have shown the hands, played on three or 
four instruments, &c. ! He suspects that 
Mr. Fay may have moved and played 
upon the guitar while in close contact with 
himself and the ■ Times ' correspondent. 
He says : — 



234 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



' Granting that Mr. Fay and his com- 
panion could move at all, bound as they 
were — and since the chairs to which they were 
bound were not fastened to the ground, this 
seems an easier supposition than in the 
case of the cabinet — there is no reason 
why they should not by the act of their 
own bodies do all that was done — 
viz., chuck about handbells, whisk guitars 
rapidly enough round to cut people's noses, 
trundle tambourines along the ground, take 
off and put on coats, remove watches out of 
hands holding them out, and place rings on 
the wrong man's finger (the new science is 
fallible even in its native darkness), espe- 
cially to a quiet observer like myself it was 
clear there was time enough allowed to do all 
this naturally and be found in one's seat 
again when the signal was again given for 
light. I am not going to adventure an 
exact explanation of how this is to be done, 
as the modus operandi is at present an im- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 235 

mature conception in my brain, but I have a 
shrewd guess at it. I will only say that Mr. 
Fay is a very strong-built man, and could 
carry Mr. Davenport, a very light weight, 
in any conceivable position ; adding, that I 
should like to be entrusted, during this 
performance, with the candle and lucifer 
borne by Dr. Ferguson, unrestricted by the 
promise not to re-illume the former till I was 
requested.' 

To any one who has seen how these 
young men are bound in their chairs, with 
their wrists firmly knotted behind their 
backs ; who has heard the guitars ringing 
and whirling through the air like a flight 
of swallows, arid seen the candle lighted 
instantly, and examined the ropes with 
which they were tied, this kind of theorizing 
is more wonderful than the phenomena it 
tries to explain. 

It is needless to give further extracts 
from the notices of this famous seance, 



236 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

which spread the news of the arrival of the 
Brothers Davenport and accounts of the 
wonders wrought in their presence over the 
world. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 237 



CHAPTER XVIL 

{ ST1LL THE WONDER GREW.' 

Private Seances — Report of ' Master of Arts ' in Daily Tele- 
graph — The Morning Star — A London Minister — The 
Morning Post — Tests that ought to be satisfactory. 

To the remarkable opening seance described 
in the last chapter succeeded others at 
private houses, and at one of the smaller 
salons of the Queen's Concert Rooms, Han- 
over Square ; but all were private in the 
sense that they were attended by persons of 
scientific, literary, or social distinction, who 
were specially invited. 

One of them, at the residence of Mr. S. 
C. Hall, well known in the world of litera- 
ture and art, where the cabinet was not used 
(which is the c apparatus' referred to be- 
low), was attended by, among many others, 



238 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

a well-known man of letters, whose very- 
clear and excellent account of what he heard 
and saw was in due time published by the 
' Daily Telegraph,' as a communication 
from a 'Master of Arts/ following the 
prudent example of other leading journals. 
This account of the seance is so frank and 
so vivid as to deserve to be given entire, 
and whether written by editor or corre- 
spondent, is evidently a clear and truthful 
statement. 

' The Brothers Davenport. 
1 (To the Editor of the " Daily Telegraph") 

c Sir, — I was a witness, on Friday even- 
ing of last week, to some of the ' manifes- 
tations ' which were exhibited by, or rather 
occur in the presence of, the young Ameri- 
cans who have recently come over here. It 
is well known that they intend to give 
public seances among us, and the more 
ordinary of these manifestations will soon 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 239 

therefore become familiar. There are, never- 
theless, circumstances about a private sitting 
which make it especially useful for previous 
criticism, since it takes place in a locality 
and amid a society where deception must 
be more difficult, while inspection is natur- 
ally closer and freer than at a public hall. 
In the circle, for instance, to which I was 
invited, the guests were mutually known, 
and bent upon the sharpest investigation. 
The host was a man of letters, of a character 
for truth and gravity which it would be 
impertinence to eulogise ; the scene was an 
apartment crowded to profusion with deli- 
cate works of art, and therefore most awk- 
ward for any rough conjuring resources ; 
and finally, the apparatus employed, 1 under- 
stand, elsewhere, was by the nature of the 
place excluded here. These are conditions 
which cannot be repeated in public ; I there- 
fore offer you, Sir, as a contribution to the 
decision which such strange phenomena 



240 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



await, my own observations, stripped of 
bias, theory, or opinion, and made as I 
should make them in the witness-box of a 
court of justice. 

' Custodem quis custodiet ? however — who 
will testify to the witness ? He may be in 
turn an impostor — may be incapable of calm 
observation — may be a headlong generaliser 
— and those with him may have been seve- 
rally and collectively, like himself, fools or 
knaves. True, that is possible ; but what is 
not possible is to find evidence not open to 
these astute objections. I pass them by, 
therefore, as the inevitable fate of anony- 
mous testimony. My name will weigh, how- 
ever, with you, I think, for sincerity and ordi- 
nary intelligence] and with regard to an 
acquaintance with the resources of legerde- 
main, a long hnoidedge of jugglers and snake- 
charmers, with their budget of tricks, has at 
least blunted the edge of my wonder upon 
that score. For my fellow-guests, they too 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 241 

were not people upon whom deception could 
be easily played. Officers of the army and 
navy, a colonial baronet, a well-known sculp- 
tor, a public writer, and others habituated 
to keep their wits about them,, made up, 
with ladies, the circle of twelve or fifteen 
present. 

t The party was completed by the two 
Brothers Davenport, a Mr t Fay, and a Mr. 
Ferguson. There is nothing very marked 
about the first two gentlemen; the Daven- 
ports are quiet young men, of mild and 
agreeable address; so also is their com- 
panion, Mr. Fay, though he is more English 
or German in appearance. The spokesman 
of the party, indeed, Mr. Ferguson, seems 
a decidedly " remarkable man," as those who 
encounter him in metaphysical discussion 
will probably acknowledge. I pass, how- 
ever, from metaphysics to what I saw, 
heard, and felt. We sate in a half-circle 
round the side of the drawing room — Mr. 
R 



242 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

Ferguson being at one end, and one of the 
Davenports at the other ; in the middle the 
second brother and Mr. Fay placed them- 
selves upon two ordinary chairs, with a 
small table between them, on which were 
laid a guitar, bell, tambourine, and trumpet ; 
while about twelve yards of clothes-line, in 
two pieces, lay at hand. It was then re- 
quested that some of our party should 
secure each of the sitters hand and foot to 
the chairs with the cord. Mr. Davenport 
was operated upon by a captain of one of 
Her Majesty's vessels of war, a distinguished 
Arctic navigator (Captain Inglefield). As 
a yachtsman, I must here plunge so far into 
technicalities as to say that each ankle of 
Mr. Davenport was roundly seized, up by 
this gentleman with a " clove-hitch," as 
also each wrist — the wrists being fastened 
to the bar of the chair behind, and the legs 
made secure by passing the line round and 
round the foot-bars, and up to meet the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT, 243 

wrist- rope, when both were joined with a 
"bread-bag knot." Sailors well know that 
a " bread-bag knot " can only be imitated 
by those who comprehend exactly the trick 
of turning a " reef-knot " into it ; in fact, 
it is the old boatswain's trap to catch a 
thief at his biscuit-store. Mr. Fay was 
made fast less scientifically, but very suffi- 
ciently, and the circle was formed in front 
of the captives. We were specially warned 
to keep our hands joined while darkness 
lasted, and the gentlemen at each extremity 
of the semicircle were duly grasped and 
held by their neighbours. The lights were 
then extinguished, and in an instant there 
commenced a medley of noises from tam- 
bourine, guitar, and bell. These sounded 
in all parts of the apartment, now high, 
now low, now here, now there — simultane- 
ously be it observed — and the passage of 
them through the air could be heard and 
felt, immensely rapid, and accompanied by 

B 2 



244 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



no foot-fall on the floor. The knees, fore- 
head, and feet of those in the circle were 
every now and then rapped by the instru- 
ments in a manner boisterous but harmless, 
and exclamations of amusement or surprise 
on our part mingled with the curious Babel. 
The guitar especially passed and repassed 
with what was more like flight than ordi- 
nary motion, at times violently strummed, 
at others as gently thrilled as an iEolian 
harp. At the end of all this a signal for 
light was given by taps, and, the apartment 
being instantly illuminated, the prisoners 
were discovered exactly as they had been 
last seen, the instruments lying about, or 
upon the knees of those present. The 
captain's sailor-like fastenings were pre- 
cisely as he had left them, and were de- 
clared to have been untouched after our 
closest examination. The same was the 
case with Mr. Fay. Hands were then 
joined, and the lights were once more ex- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 245 

tinguished; whereupon the same curious 
and vivacious sounds, motions, and play- 
ful rappings re-occurred ; and hands, or 
what appeared such— soft, warm, and 
well-defined — grasped the joined hands of 
some, or touched the knees and heads 
of others. This interval was very brief 
indeed, and then a sound was suddenly 
heard of rope being swiftly whisked apart. 
The light was struck again, and Mr. 
Davenport was found perfectly free, with 
his rope festooned about the neck of one 
of the guests. The whole space of this 
interval did not appear at all sufficient for 
the task of thus disentangling the captive in 
toils. 

* After discussing this marvel or trick, 
the circle was re-formed, the rope placed on 
the floor, and the lights re-extinguished. 
To the same discordant music, and with 
the same rustling noise, the rope was now 
heard to be taken up, and in a very short 



246 A BIOGRAPHY OE 

time Mr. Davenport was shown to us more 
tightly bound than before, in the old posi- 
tion, with a perfect roll of hitches on wrists 
and ankles and the chair-bars. Again dark- 
ness was made, and it was desired that the 
dress- coat worn by the prisoner should be 
removed. Certainly — no sooner said than 
done ; for with a u swish " something was 
heard to fly towards the circle, and Mr. 
Davenport appeared bound exactly as be- 
fore, but in his shirt-sleeves, the coat lying 
between two of those looking on. We had 
been requested previously to assure our- 
selves of the integrity of the second set of 
knots by sealing them ; this was not done, 
but an india-rubber band was twisted in a 
very peculiar way over the principal knot, 
and band and knot, so far as the sharpest 
of us could judge, were absolutely intact 
after the experiment. We had either wit- 
nessed^ therefore, a feat which laughs at the 
lavj of " the continuity of matter" resembling 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 247 

that of turning the skin of an orange inside 
out without breaking it, or we have been 
duped. You, sir, must take your choice, as 
we did, of the alternatives. This was per- 
formed with Mr. Davenport's coat, which 
may give "Wizards of the North and 
South" the right to smile at what they 
could certainly, with some important pre- 
paration beforehand, counterfeit. But after- 
wards the coat of one of the gentlemen 
present was taken oiF and laid on the table, 
and, with. the same u swish " in the dark, it 
was instantly and accurately adjusted to the 
back and arms of Mr. Davenport ; his wrists 
being still bound together and still fastened 
behind him to the chair-back ; the knots 
also being again ascertained to be, so far as 
could be judged by the closest inspection, 
unviolated. Again, Mr. Editor, I must pre- 
sent you with the dilemma, upon the horns 
of which we were tossed ; either we had 
witnessed an annihilation of what are called 



248 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

"material laws" or we were the dupes of 
extremely clever conjuring. 

' The last is the explanation, I have per- 
ceived,, of some professional prestidigitators, 
naturally alarmed for their trade ; but, 
though the " coat-ehanging trick " is com- 
mon enough among the " Houdiiis " and 
" Andersons " of Europe and Asia, it re- 
mains to be- seen if they can accept the 
conditions of it which I have attempted to 
describe. If they can, it is doubtless pres- 
tidigitation which we witnessed, and the 
darkness is a shield of tricksters, not an 
atmospheric condition absolutely demanded 
by the subtle laws of some new and unex- 
plained force. As a candid reporter of the 
proceedings, I must confess that the verdict 
of "conjuring" was not that which was 
pronounced by my .companions. But then 
almost every one was in the habit of seeing 
and hearing "manifestations," at home, or 
in private residences, of a kind daily familiar 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 249 

now to them, whatever, and whencesoever 
they may be — familiar, indeed, I under- 
stand, to thousands of persons, but very 
little spoken of except among the initiated. 
These would make, however, a bead-roll 
most surprising to the exoteric,, comprising, 
it is whispered, distinguished statesmen, 
authors, scientific men and clergymen, who 
form together a curious and quiet, society 
— either the embodiment of a mutual and 
colossal self-deceit, or the silent heralds of a 
social revolution which must shake the world. 
1 I shall neither report to you the astound- 
ing accounts which were sriven to us of 
what " had occurred " in the same way, nor 
the explanations attempted in the conver- 
sations that followed. My wish has been 
simply to present here what was seen, heard, 
and felt to happen in a private drawing- 
room, and among intelligent and careful 
observers, with serious reasons for detecting 
a trick, if trick could be detected. It only 



250 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



remains to add that the cords upon Mr. 
Fay's hands and feet had been all this while 
so tightly tied, that the tension was painful, 
and another minute's gloom was therefore 
resorted to to free him, upon which the 
cords were instantly thrown loose and fas- 
tened about Captain Inglefield's neck, in a 
knot which sailors call the " hangman's" — 
an intricate slip-knot, which gives upwards, 
but not downwards. A voice then called 
through the speaking trumpet " Good 
night ; " and the puzzling " manifesta- 
tions" of which I offer you a perfectly 
sincere, and I think an exact account, were 
concluded. The problem is very simple. 
The " wizards" have only to perform ex- 
actly the same things, and whatever more 
can be done, under the conditions which the 
Brothers Davenport dictate and accept, and 
the public will agree with their view of 
what at present is not easily explained. 
'I am, Sir, yours, &c, 

'Master or Arts.' 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 251 

To this testimony, which speaks for itself, 
I shall add a few brief extracts from that of 
other competent observers, without tasking 
the patience of the reader by copying entire 
articles. 

In a communication to the ' Morning 
Star,' written, it is said, by Mr. W. E. Hick- 
son, for eleven years editor and proprietor 
of the ' Westminster Quarterly Review,' 
occur the following observations : — 

' The moment Mr. Ferguson took away his 
hand the middle door was pulled to and fast- 
ened from within , and at the next instant 
the distinct form of a large human hand 
appeared at a diamond- shaped aperture of 
the door; sounds were heard among the 
musical instruments ; the doors flew open, 
and the trumpet and bells were thrown out 
on the floor. By whom ? Not certainly by 
the two bound prisoners, for, if free, there 
had hardly been time for them to rise from 
their seats. Was it possible that the pro- 



252 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



jecting forces required had been obtained 
by electric and chemical agency ? This ex- 
periment was repeated several times with 
similar but not quite the same results. Once 
the two bells appeared outside the aperture 
ringing violently without any hand to hold 
them, and sometimes different hands ap- 
peared — two, in one instance, together. 
And what were these hands ? Mr. Fergu- 
son was asked might they be touched. Per- 
mission being accorded, two gentlemen ap- 
proaching the aperture were patted by the 
hands, and I succeeded in just touching one 
of them, or something palpable, before it 
receded backwards, vanishing or melting in 
the darkness. The brevity of the interval 
of their appearance, too short for serious 
examination, was the unsatisfactory part of 
this experiment. 

' Who carried the guitar ? Not Mr. Fer- 
guson, for his hands were joined to ours ; 
not Messrs. Davenport and Fay, for they 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 253 

remained tied to the chairs, and the position 
of their feet, which we had marked with 
pencil, showed they had not stirred. If a 
a confederate in list slippers, no footfall 
could be detected, and no chance was given 
us, with our legs stretched out, of tripping 
him up as he passed. 

1 The coat test, however, and indeed all 
the manifestations, have yet to be better 
tested than, under the circumstances, they 
could be by me, or anyone witnessing them 
only for the first time. I will say of them 
only that the general result of what was 
seen, heard, and felt by all, was, in spite of 
the ludicrous mixed up with it, more start- 
ling and perplexing than I had conceived, 
calculated . to produce certainly a profound 
impression on many minds, and that, if jug- 
glery be at the bottom of it, those by whom 
it can be exposed cannot too early explain 
the deception in the interests of the public/ 

Another correspondent of the \ Morning 



254 



A BIOGRAPHY OE 



Star/ the Rev. Jabez Burns, after describing 
the preparations of binding, &c, and stating 
that the knots were covered with sealing- 
wax, and sealed with the crest of a gentle- 
man present, says : 

' The guitar was now touched with 
phosphorus, and when the lights were ex- 
tinguished we saw the luminous spots on it, 
on the table. Shortly it rose and moved 
around and above, us, and we could dis- 
tinctly trace it by the phosphorescent light 
it emitted. In passing close to me it struck 
the foot of a young gentleman whose hand 
was linked with mine, and left the phos- 
phorus light on the leg of his trousers. In 
the course of the experiments the coat of 
one of the Davenports was removed, and 
afterwards they were uncorded, and the 
rope of one thrown into the lap of a person 
who sat near me. 

* Now such are the actual occurrences, 
without rhetorical garniture, and literally 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 255 

as they were seen by myself and all 
present. 

' I had expected that Dr. Ferguson would 
be in connection with the closet, but he 
never went near it during the experiment, 
one of the gentlemen being invariably be- 
tween him and the closet. I cannot conceive 
of any exhibition being more open and straight- 
forward, and if there should be a conjuror 
able to repeat these tricks, as they are called, 
I shall be glad to be one of a committee to 
record it J 

The ' Morning Post' of October 6, 1864, 
contains an article, not published as a com- 
munication, which says : 

4 The theory of the Americans [Brothers 
Davenport] is that, by whatever agency 
they are untied, they themselves are passive 
agents in the matter, and that their own 
hands in no way contribute to their release. 
An ingenious test was applied, a few evenings 
since, at a seance which took place at the 



256 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



Queen's Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, 
to prove the value of the assertion. To 
show that the uncording was not effected 
by the hands of the Americans, some flour ■ 
was procured, and after the process of 
pinioning had been completed to the satis- 
faction of all present, the fingers of the 
brothers were covered with the substance, 
and they were required to hold a quantity 
of it firmly in their hands, clasped and locked 
firmly one in the other. They were at the 
time dressed in ordinary evening costume, 
■ and it would have been impossible for them 
to have untied the ropes, and subsequently 
tied them again, without being covered with 
the flour. The result was, however, as the 
Americans predicted it would be. When 
the doors of the cabinet were thrown open, 
they were found with their limbs untied, 
and in precisely the same positions in which 
they had been left, but with no portion of 
the flour on their clothes. The doors of 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 257 

the cabinet were subsequently closed, and 
after an interval of two or three minutes 
were thrown open, when the brothers were 
found tightly pinioned hand and foot, and 
clutching the flour as before.' 

The reader, in the earlier chapters of this 
biography, may have had a faint suspicion 
that the writer had what the phrenologists 
used to call ' the organ of credenciveness ' 
largely developed. Will the testimony of 
so many of the most accurate observers, and 
able writers of the leading journals of Lon- 
don, convince him that every statement con- 
tained in this volume is not only made in good 
faith, but is supported by good evidence ? 

If what some of the ablest writers in 
England assert is to be believed, then all 
here stated may be believed ; for when we 
pass the limit of ordinary possibilities, we 
have no guide but the observation of facts. 
It is no longer a question of what is pro- 
bable or possible, but of what is true. 
s 



258 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



IMPORTANT SEANCE. 



Nobility, Savans, and Men of Letters — Second Seance at Mr. 
Boucicaults — An admirable Description — Needless 
Disclaimers — The true Philosophical Method. 

I come now to the most important, clear, 
and authoritative statement yet made in 
this volume : — 

On the night of October 11th, 1864, a 
very distinguished company assembled at 
the residence of Mr. Dion Boucicault, to 
witness the manifestations which are given 
in the presence of the Brothers Davenport. 
It consisted of Yiscount Bury, M.P., Sir 
Charles Wyke, G.C.B., Sir Charles Nichol- 
son, Ambassador to Mexico, the Chancellor 
of the University of Sydney, the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives of Queensland, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 



25 9 



Mr. Robert Bell, Mr. Robert Chambers, 
LL.D., Mr. Charles Reade, D.C.L., Capt. 
Inglefield, the Arctic navigator, two phy- 
sicians, and several writers of the daily 
press, whose names will be found in the fol- 
lowing luminous and admirable report of 
the proceedings by Mr. Boucicault. 

1 The Davenport Brothers. 
< To the Editor of the " Daily News." 
i Sir, — A seance by the Brothers Daven- 
port and Mr. W. Fay took place in my 
house yesterday in the presence of 

Mr. J. W. Kaye, 
„ J. A. Bostock, 

„ H. J. RlDEOUT, 



Lord Burt, 

Sir Charles Nicholson, 
Shi John Gardiner, 
Slr C. Lennox Wyke, 
Rev. E. H. Newenham, 
Rev. W. Ellis, 
Capt. E. A. Inglefield, 
Mr. Charles Reade, 
„ James Matthews, 
„ Algernon Borth- 

wick, 
„ I. Wdlles, 
„ H. E. Ormerod, 



Robert Bell, 
J. N. Mangles, 
H, M. Dunphy, 
W.Tyler Smith, m.d. 
E. Tyler Smith, 
T. L. Coward, 
John Brown, m.d. 
Robert Chambers, 

and 
Dion Boucical-lt. 



260 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



' The room in which the meeting was 
held is a large drawing-room, from which 
all the furniture had been previously re- 
moved, excepting the carpet, a chandelier, 
a small table, a sofa, a pedestal, and twenty- 
six cane-bottomed chairs. 

' At two o'clock six of the above party 
arrived, and the room was subjected to care- 
ful scrutiny. It was suggested that a cabi- 
net to be used by the Brothers Davenport, 
but then erected in an adjacent room, should 
be removed into the front room, and placed 
in a spot selected by ourselves. This was 
done by our party, but in the process we 
displaced a portion of this piece of furni- 
ture, thus enabling us to examine its mate- 
rial and structure before we mended it. At 
three o'clock our party was fully assembled, 
and continued the scrutiny. We sent to a 
neighbouring music-seller for six guitars 
and two tambourines, so that the imple- 
ments to be used should not be those with 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 261 

which the operators were familiar. At half- 
past three the Brothers Davenport and Mr. 
Fay arrived, and found that we had altered 
their arrangements, by changing the room 
which they had previously selected for their 
manifestations. The seance then began by 
an examination of the dress and persons of 
the Brothers Davenport, and it was certified 
that no apparatus or other contrivance was 
concealed on or about their persons. They 
entered the cabinet, and sat facing each 
other. Captain Inglefield then, with a new 
rope provided by ourselves, tied Mr. W- 
Davenport hand and foot, with his hands 
behind his back, and then bound him firmly 
to the seat where he sat. Lord Bury, in 
like manner, secured Mr. I. Davenport. 
The knots on these ligatures were then 
fastened with sealing-wax, and a seal was 
affixed. A guitar, violin, tambourine, two 
bells, and a brass trumpet were placed on 
the floor of the cabinet. The doors were 



262 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

then closed, and a sufficient light was per- 
mitted in the room to enable us to see what 
followed. I shall omit any detailed account 
of the Babel of sounds which arose in the 
cabinet, and the violence with which the 
doors were repeatedly burst open and the 
instruments expelled ; trie hands appearing, 
as usual, at a lozenge-shaped orifice in the 
centre door of the cabinet. The following 
incidents seem to us particularly worthy of 
note : — While Lord Bury was stooping 
inside the cabinet, the door being open, and 
the two operators seen to be sealed and 
bound, a detached hand was clearly ob- 
served to descend upon him, and he started 
back, remarking that a hand had struck 
him. Again, in the full light of the gas 
chandelier, and during an interval in the 
seance, the doors of the cabinet being open, 
and while the ligatures of the Brothers 
Davenport were being examined, a very 
white, thin, female hand and wrist qui- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 263 

vered for several seconds in the air above. 
This appearance drew a general exclama- 
tion from all the party. Sir Charles Wyke 
now entered the cabinet, and sat between 
the two young men — his hands being right 
and left on each, and secured to them. The 
doors were then closed, and the Babel of 
sounds recommenced. Several hands ap- 
peared at the orince — among them the 
hand of a child. After a space, Sir Charles 
returned amongst us, and stated that 
while he held the two brothers several 
hands touched his face and pulled his hair ; 
the instruments at his feet crept up, played 
round his body and over his head — one of 
them lodging eventually on his shoulders. 
During the foregoing incidents the hands 
which appeared were touched and grasped by 
Captain Inglefield and he stated that to the 
touch they were apparently human hands, 
though they passed away from his grasp. 
I omit mentioning other phenomena, an 



264 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



account of which has already been rendered 
elsewhere. 

The next part of the seance was per- 
formed in the dark. One of the Messrs. 
Davenport and Mr. Fay seated themselves 
amongst us. Two ropes were thrown at 
their feet, and in two minutes and a half 
they were tied hand and foot, their hands 
behind their backs bound tightly to their 
chairs, and their chairs bound to an adjacent 
table. While this process was going on, 
the guitar rose from the table, and swung 
or floated round the room and over the 
heads of the party, and slightly touching 
some. Now a phosphoric light shot from 
side to side over our heads; the laps and 
hands, and shoulders of several were 
simultaneously touched, struck, or pawed 
by hands, the guitar meanwhile sailing 
round the room, now near the ceiling, and 
then scuffling on the head and shoulders of 
some luckless wight. The bells whisked 



THE EROTHERS DAVENPORT. 265 

here and there, and a light thrumming was 
maintained on the violin. The two tam- 
bourines seemed to roll hither and thither 
on the floor, now shaking it violently, and 
now visiting the knees and hands of our 
circle — all these foregoing actions, audible 
or tangible, being simultaneous. Mr. 
Kideout, holding a tambourine, requested 
it might be plucked from his hand; it was 
almost instantaneously taken from him. At 
the same time Lord Bury made a similar 
request, and a forcible attempt to pluck a 
tambourine from his grasp was made, 
which he resisted. Mr. Fay then asked 
that his coat should be removed. We 
heard instantlv a violent twitch ; and here 
occurred the most remarkable fact. A light 
was struck before the coat had quite left 
Mr. Fay's person, and it was seen quitting 
him, plucked off him upwards. It flew up 
to the chandelier, where it hun^ for a 
moment, and then fell to the ground. Mr. 



266 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



Fay was seen meanwhile bound hand and 
foot as before. One of our party now 
divested himself of his coat, and it was 
placed on the table. The light was ex- 
tinguished, and this coat was rushed on to 
Mr. Fay's back with equal rapidity. Dur- 
ing the above occurrences in the dark, we 
placed a sheet of paper under the feet of 
these two operators, and drew with a pencil 
an outline around them, to the end that if 
they moved, it might be detected. They of 
their own accord offered to have their hands 
filled with flour, or any other similar sub- 
stance, to prove they made no use of them, 
but this precaution was deemed unneces- 
sary ; we required them, however, to count 
from one to twelve repeatedly, that their 
voices constantly heard might certify to 
us that they were in the places where they 
were tied. Each of our own party held his 
neighbour firmly, so that no one could move 
without two adjacent neighbours being 
aware of it. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 267 

6 At the termination of this seance, a 
general conversation took place on the 
subject of what we had heard and wit- 
nessed. Lord Bury suggested that the 
general opinion seemed to be that we 
should assure the Brothers Davenport and 
Mr. W. Fay, that after a very stringent 
trial and strict scrutiny of their proceed- 
ings, the gentlemen present could arrive at 
no other conclusion than that there was no 
trace of trickery in any form, and cer- 
tainly there were neither confederates nor 
machinery, and that all those who had 
witnessed the results would freely state in 
the society in which they moved, that so 
far as their investigations enabled them to 
form an opinion, the phenomena which had 
taken place in their presence were not the 
product of legerdemain. This suggestion 
was promptly acceded to by all present. 

' Before leaving this question, in which 
my name has accidentally become mixed 



2-38 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



up, I may be permitted to observe that I 
have no belief in what is called Spiritualism, 
and nothing I have seen inclines me to 
believe in it — indeed, the puerility of some 
of the demonstrations would sufficiently 
alienate such a theory ; but I do believe 
that we have not quite explored the realms 
of natural philosophy — that this enterprise 
of thought has of late years been confined 
to useful inventions, and we are content at 
least to think that the laws of nature are 
finite, ascertained, and limited to the scope 
of our knowledge. A very great number 
of worthy persons seeing such phenomena 
as I have detailed ascribe them to super- 
natural agency ; others wander around the 
subject in doubt; but as it engages seriously 
the feeling and earnest thought of so large 
a number in Europe and America, is it a 
subject which scientific men are justified in 
treating with the neglect of contempt ? 
' Some persons think that the require- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 269 

ment of darkness seems to infer trickery. 
Is not a dark chamber essential in the 
process of photography ? And what would 
we reply to him who should say, " I believe 
photography to be a humbug ; do it all in 
the light, and I will believe otherwise, and 
not till then?" It is true that we know 
why darkness is necessary to the production 
of the sun picture ; and if scientific men 
will subject these phenomena to analysis, 
we shall find out why darkness is essential 
to such manifestations. 

1 1 am, &c., 

'Dion Boucicault.' 

326 Regent Street, Oct. 12, 1864. 

I have given this clear and authorised 
statement of facts entire, as it appeared in 
many of the London journals, because I 
did not wish to take the liberty of con- 
densing in the slightest degree so remark- 
able a document. Otherwise I should have 



270 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

taken the liberty to omit — and, had I been 
consulted in the matter, should have ad- 
vised Mr. Boucicault to omit — the first few 
lines in the last paragraph but one. He 
had given the facts as they were witnessed 
by himself and the distinguished party of 
gentlemen he had invited. They were all 
satisfied that there had been, and could 
have been, no deception, no collusion, no 
imposture whatever in the manifestations. 
What are called physical impossibilities — 
what are usually denominated miracles — 
occurred at every stage of the procedings. 
They could not distrust themselves or each 
other, and they took the most thorough 
means of preventing the possibility of their 
being imposed upon by the Brothers Da- 
venport, Mr. Fay, and Mr. Ferguson. 
Where, then, was the necessity of a per- 
sonal disclaimer as to a matter, theory, or 
belief, of which there was, so far as ap- 
pears, no question whatever ? Or why did 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 271 

not Mr. Boucicault go further, and assert 
that he was not a Methodist, or Mormon, 
Eoman Catholic or Buddhist, nor a believer 
in Fetishism or Mumbo Jumbo ? 

The report is complete, and every one 
must agree that it is admirably written, 
so far as it is a report, down to the two 
concluding paragraphs. Mr. Boucicault 
fails only, where many men of genius 
have failed, when he comes to personalities 
which had better be left out of the case 
altogether. 

It is also to be regretted that Lord Bury 
became so nettled by the chaffing of l Times' 
correspondents as to consider it necessary 
to make a petulant answer, which had, how- 
ever, the merit of being also a witty one. 
He says : ' One of your correspondents, 
who informs us with superfluous candour 
that he is "no conjuror," proposes, for the 
sake of fair play, to bind me and Captain 
Inglefield hand and foot, and throw us 



272 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



into the Serpentine. I should like to say 
a few words first.' Lord Bury proceeds to 
say that he refused to sign a paper which 
referred the manifestations to some mys- 
terious agency, and said that 4 all the Bro- 
thers Davenport could reasonably expect 
from us was, that we should state in society 
the simple truth — viz. that we had failed to 
detect any evidence of trickery or collusion.' 
Of course this was all that could be asked 
of any committee whatever. Lord Bury 
and the gentlemen present at this seance 
are not asked to tell us how these things 
are done. Of course they know no more 
about it than the rest of us. What we 
require of them is very clearly indicated — 
it was to tell us what was done, and that 
it was not done, so far as twenty-four gen- 
tlemen, as well qualified for the purpose as 
any other two dozen in the United King- 
dom, could judge, by trick or collusion, 
fraud or jugglery. Further these depo- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 273 

nents say not, and further no one can 
reasonably expect them to say. 

In the case of the toads enclosed in solid 
limestone, what could they do more ? They 
would first examine the stone as it lay in 
the quarry; they would see it split open. 
The toad, waking from his sleep of ages, 
drags himself out of his hole in the rock, 
and the cavity which contained him is 
examined. If Lord Bury were on a sci- 
entific committee, should we expect him to 
tell us how the toad came to be enclosed in 
the solid rock, or how it had managed to 
survive its incarceration of thousands of 
years ? Not at all. We might take his 
theory for what it was worth : but what 
we should want first of all would be assu- 
rance of the facts, and that there was, as 
far as he and the committee could judge, 
4 no trick or collusion. ' 

Still I must say that the lovers of truth, 
without regard to theories, are indebted 

T 



274 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



to Lord Bury and all the gentlemen who 
attended this seance, and more than all, 
perhaps, to Mr. Boucicault, for an exhi- 
bition of so much candour, moral courage, 
and genuine philosophy, which I cannot 
but think more in character for English 
gentlemen than the sneers, ridicule, and 
flagrant abuse of a portion of the press of 
this metropolis. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 275 



CHAPTER XIX. 

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM. 

The Press in Opposition — Ugly Trash for Bedlam — Com- 
mon Conjuring — Fantastic Tricks and Farthing Candles 
— Miserable Trifling — Grotesquely absurd and stupidly 
meaningless — Reverend Dobbs — Tedious, dull, and vulgar 
— The Secret not worth knowing — Human Nature and 
an Awful Warning. 

Having given so much of the testimony of 
the London newspaper press and its corre- 
spondents respecting the earlier seances of 
the Brothers Davenport in England, it 
may be considered but fair, and it will 
certainly be amusing, to ' hear the other 
side/ 

The 'Standard' of October 1, 1864, in 
its leading leader, begs c to suggest that it 
was all, from beginning to end, a piece of 
flagrant jugglery.' It thinks ' it is asto- 

T 2 



276 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



nishing to find respectable journals defacing 
their columns with this ugly trash.' It gives 
all the particulars, notwithstanding, in its 
largest type and most conspicuous column, 
and then says: — i When a "floating guitar" 
has drawn blood, while the Brothers re- 
main bound to their chairs, the remedies 
which irresistibly suggest themselves are 
those of Bethlehem Hospital. ' ' To what 
are we coming, or rather to what are we 
going?' ' But what, after all. is the social 
use of these enchanters ? They do nothing 
for us. They cannot trace a pickpocket, or 
find a lost watch, or reclaim a missing 
relative. . . . We discard Magus, and we 
had hoped not to hear of him again, dupli- 
cated by the Brothers Davenport, with 
their changing of coats, their miraculous 
appearance in shirt- sleeves, and their ap- 
paratus of ropes, which we trust will be 
some day more efficaciously employed. . . . 
Really, an intellectual poison and in toxica- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 277 

tion have come into fashion on these be- 
wildering subjects, and the public have 
been dosed so often and so powerfully that 
we wish this experimental physician who 
prescribes such mysterious drugs would 
cut short his visit.' 

It is pretty evident that this writer tries 
to think the manifestations are vulgar 
jugglery, but he finds it hard to keep to 
that opinion. He suspects they are real, 
and is a little afraid of them. 

The ' Spectator ' thinks it looks like i a 
common case of conjuring managed by a 
secret entrance into the apartment behind 
the cabinet.' But as the room is alight, and 
the committee passed behind the cabinet or 
surrounded it, such an explanation will not 
answer. When persons sit in the cabinet 
between the brothers, no such aid would be 
possible. 

The ' Herald,' October 4, says : c An 
attempt is being made to palm off these 



278 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



Brothers Davenport as phenomena. They 
themselves accept their ludicrous reputa- 
tion, though as yet we have heard nothing 
of their doings more extraordinary or dig- 
nified than the tricks of a common juggler 
in the street, of a Chinese theatre, or of a 
strolling company of Japan. . . . We trust 
that public curiosity will not encourage the 
sham. It means, if anything, that spirits — 
powers hovering between earth and heaven 
— help a man off with his coat, tinkle a 
muffin-bell, play upon banjoes, touch people's 
knees, rap them on the knuckles, and play 
a hundred fantastic tricks, which cease im- 
mediately upon the lighting of a farthing 
candle. It is too much !' 

It is also 4 too much ' to be begging the 
whole question in this fashion. The first 
thing to be decided is, are these things 
done, and not by the Davenports or other 
human agency ? Who or what does them, 
and why they are done, will then be the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 279 

questions next in order. It is not philo- 
sophical to say of any phenomenon, ' If this 
occurred, it must have been from such a 
cause, which is absurd — therefore it never 
happened.' So many improbable things 
happen that we have the proverb, ' Truth is 
stranger than fiction.' 

While some of the journals are content 
to be flippant and sarcastic, the c Daily 
News,' of October 8, is tremendously indig- 
nant. In' its solemn view of the subject, 
1 it is both surprising and deplorable that 
persons of education and standing should 
not only countenance but welcome and 
applaud such efforts, and that influential 
organs of opinion should be found ready 
to give them indirect encouragement, if not 
positive support.' The ' Daily Xews ' asserts 
that their tricks are vulgar jugglery, such 
as are commonly performed on both sides of 
the Atlantic. Then it scolds educated and 
respectable people for encouraging such im- 



280 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



postures. Then it is a reaction from scep- 
ticism. Finally, c such miserable trifling 
with noble emotions is not only utterly 
unworthy of any serious and manly mind, 
but must, in the nature of the case, lead to 
most injurious results. To divorce any 
emotion from its true objects and ends is to 
abuse and degrade it, and to do thus with 
regard to emotions that lead us beyond the 
world of sense tends directly to dry up the 
most sacred springs of belief and action.' 

And all this outburst of eloquence and 
morality about a party of common jugglers, 
who are doing tricks with which everybody 
is familiar ! It reminds one of the thunder- 
clap that astonished poor Moses when he 
had stolen into a dark corner of a chop- 
house to eat his bit of bacon. 

The ' Saturday Keview ' would be ex- 
pected of course to have something very 
spicy or very savage on so exciting a sub- 
ject. It could not keep its various nick- 



THE BROTHEES DAVENPORT. 231 

names of ; Saturday Reviler,' &c. other- 
wise. It says : c As to the phenomena 
themselves, anything so grotesquely absurd 
and stupidly meaningless has not yet been 
produced, even in the dreary annals of 
spiritualism.' And then, losing its usual 
pointed vivacity, it goes off, like the l Daily 
News/ into a solemn sermon about 'the 
world of spirits/ — as if that had anything 
to do with the case whatever ! 

The ' John Bull ' has heard a story of a 
' Reverend Dobbs,' in Canada, who tied 
and untied knots, and declared himself 
ready to do whatever the Davenports did 
if they would only lend him their apparatus 
— the apparatus consisting of a walnut-box, 
some half-inch ropes, and a few not very 
costly musical instruments ! 

The ' London Review ' suggests ' that 
until the Brothers can be seen bound 
while the manifestations are occurring, 
people will believe they have something 



282 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



to do with them ; ' but as thousands of 
people have seen the manifestations, and 
the Brothers fast bound without so much 
as a second intervening, this goes for very 
little. 

The * Morning Star ' says : ' We give an 
opinion which we know is not shared by 
some highly intelligent and candid men who 
were present at last night's performance 
(the Press seance), when we say that it ap- 
peared to us tedious, dull, and vulgar. If 
the exhibition were an avowed display of 
conjuring cleverness it would be but a 
poor and vapid entertainment. Only those 
who believe it to be performed by some super- 
natural or extra-natural power can feel any 
genuine interest in it.' 

This is to a certain extent true. If the 
manifestations were deceptions, by leger- 
demain, machinery, and the aid of confede- 
rates, they would be very poor and worthless, 
and the whole London press would have 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 283 

made itself very contemptible by taking so 
much notice of them. 

The ' Globe ' is rather of this opinion, and 
talks in a superior manner of ' two baker* s 
dozens of accomplished gentlemen engaged 
in a dark room in trying to find out how 
conjurors perform their tricks ! What a 
satire on this enlightened age ! . . . We say, 
let the brother conjurors make their money ; 
but if they are to be put to the test, let the 
test be applied, not by men of science, but 
by a board of conjurors under a competent 
chairman. We should then soon know the 
secret — a secret not worth knowing.' 

It has been stated in some of the London 
papers that the Brothers Davenport were 
watched closely for a week by Mr. Hermann, 
one of the cleverest prestidigitateurs and 
conjurors in America, without being able to 
get any clue to the secret, and that he became 
perfectly convinced that no kind of jugglery 
had anything to do with it. The suggestion, 



284 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



however, is not a bad one. There are no 
doubt respectable manufacturers of conjur- 
ing apparatus and performers in London, who, 
associated with two or three men of science 
and a couple of sharp detectives, might find 
out the ' secret not worth knowing.' 

It is useless to continue quotations which 
are to the same purport, and when we have 
no guarantee of the wisdom or even of the 
sincerity of the writers. If the leading 
writers of the leading papers of London, 
stating simply matters of their own obser- 
vation — what they saw and heard — felt 
obliged to assume the mask of contributors, 
as if not sufficiently shielded by being anony- 
mous, or if the editors of these leading and 
powerful organs of public opinion thought 
it necessary thus to disown the members of 
their respective staffs, what could be ex- 
pected of periodicals in a less independent 
position ? 

On the whole, ' human nature 7 enters about 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 285 

as largely into the composition of the gen- 
tlemen of the press as elsewhere. The press 
is ' free ' to do what is for its interests, and 
it is c independent ' of whatever will not 
affect its circulation and influence. No- 
where probably is the press less purchasable, 
or less capable of being directly influenced 
by base and mercenary considerations ; but 
there is the great public of readers, whose 
tastes and prejudices must be consulted. 
The case of a celebrated monthly magazine 
has been an ' awful warning ' to the whole 
English press. Some years ago it published 
a perfectly fair statement of facts, as ob- 
served by one of its favourite contributors. 
The result is said to have been the loss of 
three thousand copies of its circulation, to 
say nothing of unmeasured ridicule and 
abuse. Even in free England it is not 
always profitable to tell the truth. This 
magazine has repented and recanted. A 
few months ago it laid down the rule that 



286 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



a man ought not to believe what he con- 
sidered improbable on any amount of testi- 
mony, that of his own senses included — a 
safe rule for magazine editors, no doubt, if 
not a wise one for the general public. First 
make up your mind what you will believe 
and what you will refuse to believe, and 
then * so much the worse for the facts/ 
when they happen to be against you. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 287 



CHAPTER XX. 

A PERSONAL STATEMENT. 

What I think of the Brothers Davenport, and what I saw at 
a Seance at the Hanover-square Rooms. 

This may be as good a place as another to 
give my individual testimony respecting the 
Brothers Davenport, and the phenomena 
which occur in their presence. 

The young men, with whom I have had 
but a brief personal acquaintance, and whom 
I never saw until their arrival in London, 
appear to me to be, in intellect and charac- 
ter, above the average of their young coun- 
trymen. They are not remarkable for 
cleverness, though of fair abilities, and Ira 
has some artistic talent. The manifesta- 
tions seem to have been quite as extraordinary 
ten years ago, when they were boys of four- 






288 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

teen and fifteen years, as at the present 
time. The young men seem entirely honest, 
and singularly disinterested and unmerce- 
nary — far more anxious to have people 
satisfied of their integrity and the reality of 
their manifestations than to make money. 
They have an ambition, without doubt, 
which is gratified in their having been 
selected as the instruments of what they 
believe will be some great good to mankind, 
and they are not free from the personal 
tastes and vanities common to their age, 
and from which only a few of the very 
wisest of us are entirely exempted. 

I have elsewhere given my estimate of Mr. 
Ferguson, the gentleman who exercises a 
friendly and almost parental care over them, 
and who attends them to state the conditions 
of the manifestations. Of the purely busi- 
ness relations of Mr. Palmer I need not 
again speak. 

The seance I am about to describe took 
place at the Queen's Concert Kooms, Hano- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 289 

ver Square, on Friday evening, October 28, 
1864. The company consisted of fifty- two 
persons, the larger portion of whom had 
secured admission by payment. The rest — 
members of the Press, and some who had 
attended previous seances — were invited. 
It was desired that Captain Inglefield 
should be one of the tying and trying com- 
mittee, but he declined, on the ground that 
he had done his best on two or three former 
occasions, but his knots were all untied, and 
he was naturally discouraged. 

Two intelligent and sufficiently sceptical 
gentlemen were chosen, and proceeded to 
tie the two brothers in and to the slight 
cabinet, which could be seen over, under, 
and on each side, and by the committee 
behind. It was at no time possible that 
any person could approach it in any way, or 
for any purpose, unseen by the audience: 
concealed machinery was equally out of the 
question. 

u 



290 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



After the binding twenty persons, per- 
haps, examined the ropes and knots. The 
side doors were then shut and fastened. The 
middle door was then pushed close, and the 
bolt inside was instantly heard to shoot into 
its fastening ; the trumpet was thrown out 
of a small opening near the top of the door, 
and the middle door thrown open from the 
inside. In two seconds — as quickly as pos- 
sible — the other doors were opened, and the 
Brothers seen to be firmly bound, precisely 
as they had been. Who threw out the 
trumpet ? Hands were shown at the open- 
ing, and the bell held out and rung, and 
then dropped on the floor. Instantly the 
open doors stowed the Brothers bound. 
There was not a moment's delay — not time 
to untie or tie one of twenty knots. Whose 
were the hands, and who rang the bell ? 
Most certainly neither of the Davenports, 
and as certainly no other person. 

One of the three doors was closed, and 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 291 

from behind it hands and portions of arms 
appeared. The closed door was flung open 
instantly, and the young men were seen 
bound as before. Once a feminine hand 
and two-thirds of a bare arm was reached 
through the hole in the middle door, and 
the whole interior was exposed in a moment, 
with the same result as before. 

"What hands and arms were those ? Cer- 
tainly not those of the Davenports, and as 
certainly there was no other person in the 
cabinet, or near it. 

The doors were again closed, and a rattling 
and drawing of ropes was heard for nearly 
four minutes (three minutes forty- eight 
seconds), with the ringing of the bell and 
other noises. The doors were opened, and 
the young men stood up free, while the 
thirty or forty feet of small rope with which 
they had been bound lay coiled between 
them. 

Had they unbound themselves? Their 

u 2 



292 A BIOGRAPHY OF 

wrists were firmly knotted together ; their 
hands cannot pass through a rope-ring con- 
siderably larger than their wrists, and they 
could in no way reach the ends of the ropes. 
On other occasions they have held their 
hands full of flour, had the knots sealed, 
and submitted to similar tests innumerable. 

The doors were closed again, and after a 
noise of rattling and whishing of ropes, 
lasting about two minutes, they were found 
to be bound more thoroughly and securely 
than before. A large portion of the audience 
went upon the platform to inspect this new 
binding. Who did it ? The hands were 
firmly knotted together, and fixed in their 
position ; the feet were immovably fast- 
ned. They were bound to their seats, 
and the ends of the rope were entirely beyond 
their reach. It is certain that they did not 
tie themselves, and it is equally certain 
that no other visible person was in the box. 

Several musical instruments were now 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 293 

placed in the cabinet between the Brothers, 
but not within their reach. The doors were 
scarcely closed before we heard the tuning 
of the violin, the keys turning while the 
strings were snapped. That takes two hands. 
TVhose ? Then a rude concert commenced — 
the violin being played with the bow ; the 
tambourine rumbled, the guitar thrummed, 
and the bell joined in the accompaniment. 
The music was not of a high order, but 
three common rustic tunes were played in 
good time and tune, lasting in all some ten 
or fifteen minutes. Then, while the instru- 
ments were still sounding, the middle door 
suddenly flew open, the instruments came 
tumbling out, the side doors were instantly 
opened, and everyone saw the Brothers 
Davenport bound hand and foot, with no 
indication that they had made the slightest 
movement. The committee reported the 
knots perfect. People got upon the platform 
to look for themselves. 



294 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



Now, who made the music ? Certainly 
not the Davenports. Provided they could 
have got out of their fastenings, which I be- 
lieve impossible, they had not two seconds 
from the time we heard the instruments all 
playing, before we saw them securely and 
elaborately bound, so that the committee 
could not see even the slightest change. 
Well, who made the concert ? It required 
four pairs of hands ; but here were but two, 
and they securely fastened ! 

It was stated by one of the committee that 
Mr. William Davenport's pulse was raised 
to 130, while Mr. Ira Davenport's was not 
affected. The fact of Ira's pulse not being 
affected perceptibly, shut in the close box, 
proves that he did not unbind and bind him- 
self, or take part in the rapid and violent 
concert. The different state of William's 
pulse, under the same conditions, would 
indicate some difference of temperament, 
or constitutional susceptibility. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 295 

The assembly was next seated in a semi- 
circle of two rows, one close behind the 
other. In the centre, some ten feet removed 
from the nearest persons, was an ' oblong 
table and two chairs, one on each side of the 
table. Mr. Ira Davenport was firmly bound 
to one chair, by a gentleman selected from 
the company, and Mr. Win. M. Fay to the 
other. Their feet were made fast, and their 
hands very firmly tied behind them. Sheets 
of white paper were placed under their feet, 
and marked round with a pencil. Every- 
body took hold of hands, so that each person 
was held by two others. Wm. Davenport 
was held by a gentleman at one end of the 
semicircle, and Mr. Ferguson, who held the 
candle and matches for relighting, was held 
by Captain Inglefield at the other. 

The instant the light was extinguished, 
and before the quickest-footed person could 
have entered the room, the bell and musical 
instruments on the table were in com mo- 



296 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



tion. A guitar flew around in the air above 
our heads like a bat or swallow, twanging 
as it went, its course and motion being easily 
distinguished by the sound. It went much 
higher than a man could reach, and it was 
not thrown in right lines, but flew in curves 
or circles, ringing as it went, and plainly 
fanning the air upon our faces with its rapid 
motion. The sound was not so sharp as 
that made by the fingers or thumb, but loud 
and full. After a few moments the instru- 
ment rested on the floor, a match was struck, 
and everyone was satisfied that neither Mr. 
Davenport nor Mr. Fay had moved. Their 
hands were tied behind them, their feet had 
not stirred from the pencil-marks. 

Now, who made the flying music ? Not 
the Davenports, nor any person in the com- 
pany, for they were all secured too firmly, 
had they been able to do it. By some 
power the twanging ringing instrument 
was made to fly round the room over our 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 297 

heads more like the flight of a swallow 
than anything to which I can compare it. 
Again and again after these sounds the 
candle was lighted, and each time the fas- 
tenings found secure. 

Then Mr. Fay was unbound by some in- 
visible power, while Mr. Davenport remained 
bound ; next Mr. Davenport was unbound, 
while Mr. Fay was bound ; then both were 
found again more securely bound, if possible, 
than at the beginning. 

And now came the crowning marvel — a 
thing so utterly astounding that I should 
not hope to be believed had I been its only 
witness. While both were firmly bound 
to their chairs, several feet apart, and the 
company secured by each other, a slight 
rushing or whishing sound was heard, and 
the light called for. Mr. Fay's coat, which 
he had on the moment before, was lying on 
the table, and he sitting in his shirtsleeves, 
with his hands still firmly tied together at 



298 



A BIOGRAPHY OE 



the wrists behind him, and also to the chair. 
The coat was examined, and no rip or rent 
discovered. 

How can a man take off his coat, or how 
can it be taken off, with his hands tied to- 
gether behind him ? I only know, as some 
hundreds of persons in London know, that 
it was done! 

It was asked if some gentleman would 
lend his coat for a few moments. A stout 
beaver-cloth coat was proffered and laid 
upon the table. The candle was blown out, 
and in a few moments relighted. The bor- 
rowed coat was found completely and pro- 
perly put on Mr. Davenport, over his own, 
while his hands were seen to be firmly and 
very tightly tied behind him, and bound to 
the back of the chair. I felt and examined 
the knots, as did many others : there was 
no mistake, or possibility of a mistake. 

How was this done ? To say that in those 
few moments Ira Davenport was unbound, 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 299 

put on the coat, and was again tied, is absurd. 
It was the same when the knots were sealed 
with sealing-wax or his hands fastened 
with sticking-plaister. There was not time 
even to untie him had there been confede- 
rates to do it. He could not have untied 
himself. It is perfectly evident that these 
coats went on and off, in direct violation of 
what we know as physical laws, by the same 
power that had done all the things which 
may seem less wonderful or less impossible, 
but of which we can give no better expla- 
nation ; and they show that this power has 
a control over material substances of which 
we are unable to form the least conception. 

I am sensible that my account does not 
differ essentially from several others, but 
there were particular points which I wished 
to press upon the notice of the reader. 

There is one more. If what I have 
written be true, and every cool observer 
present will confirm every word, the whole 



300 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



matter deserves the most earnest investiga- 
tion of men of science, It is more interest- 
ing than the gorilla : it is of more impor- 
tance than a new gas, a new metal, or a 
newly-discovered planet. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 301 



CHAPTER XXL 

' AND THE MAGICIANS DID SO WITH THEIR 
ENCHANTMENTS.' 

The '■Professors'' Excited — Duty to Expose Imposture- 
Professor Anderson — Mr. Tolmaque — Challenges 
Quibbled out of— The Magicians resort to Tricks— 
Hope-tying in Demand — A Ten Years' Contest — Testi- 
mony of an Amateur. 

In the l Dark Ages ' the marvels done in 
presence of the Brothers Davenport would 
have been referred by a large majority of 
the people to necromancy or witchcraft. 
In these enlightened days ail those who do 
not care to examine ascribe them at once to 
legerdemain, and the mechanical deceptions 
of professional jugglers or so-called conju- 
rors. Of course at this daj 7 , and in this 
country, no one out of the nursery believes 
in magic as it was anciently believed in 



302 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



everywhere, and still is over the Eastern 
World. 

Most people have been amused and, per- 
haps, astonished at the tricks of our modern 
magicians, who fry pancakes in hats, make 
cards or money dance, pour all kinds of 
liquors out of a single bottle, shoot gold 
watches into the centre of uncut oranges, 
and so on. These tricks are amusing and, 
until we know the modus operandi, they are 
surprising. It is not strange that those 
who cannot account for the Davenport ma- 
nifestations, and who also know but little 
about them, should class them with such 
performances. 

It is not strange, either, that as soon as 
the various * professors ' of these magical 
arts found the phenomena attending the 
Brothers Davenport noticed in the leading 
papers of England as their amusing but 
not especially wonderful performances were 
not likely to be, they should endeavour to 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 303 

take advantage of this kind of publicity, and 
of the excitement these wonders had pro- 
duced. And if the 'professors' believed 
that the Davenports were mere jugglers 
like themselves, they had also a right to be 
indignant, as would everyone, that they 
were gaining notoriety, and perhaps money, 
under false pretences. I cheerfully admit 
that it would be the right, and perhaps the 
duty, of every magician in England to ex- 
pose such a base and infamous deception, 
and they could not do it too speedily. 

The Brothers Davenport had scarcely ap- 
peared in London before Professor Ander- 
son, then performing at St. James's Hall, 
declared that they were ' very clever young 
artistes, who have been performing the rope- 
tying trick, bell-ringing, trumpet-flying, and 
changing-coat experiments, all of which my 
son is exhibiting at the present time in 
America, by natural agency only.' Then 
came ' M. Tolmaque, Presticligitateur,' de- 



304 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



daring that ' he could do the same things 
as the Davenports in the same manner,' and 
offering to show a committee how they were 
done if the Davenports would do the same. 
An i Officer of the Army ' offered to take 
off his jacket without removing his coat ; 
but when he was required to have his hands 
tied together, like the Davenports, he re- 
spectfully declined. 

The Brothers Davenport met the state- 
ment of Professor Anderson fairly and 
squarely, as follows : — 



30S Regent Street, Oct. 6, 1864. 

1 Sir, — Having read your letter in the 
" Morning Post " of Saturday last, we beg 
to accept the challenge made or implied in 
that communication. We are ready to ap- 
pear before a party of twelve or more gen- 
tlemen, specially chosen as capable of 
fairly investigating the phenomena we pre- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 305 

sent. You shall be present, and shall have 
every facility given yon to examine the 
empty room and the instruments we use. 
You shall then explain, to the satisfaction 
of the gentlemen present, the legerdemain 
you have stated we employ, or produce, if 
you can, in your own person the same re- 
sults. Should you succeed, by legerdemain, 
in performing or imitating those results, or 
be able to detect and expose imposture, we 
shall then be ready to acknowledge that 
your accusations are justly founded. But if 
you fail — as we are well assured you will 
do — we shall require you to retract publicly 
the accusations you have publicly made 
against us. 

' We are, &c, 

1 Brothers Davenport. 

' To Professor Anderson, 
< St. James's Hall.' 



306 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



The Professor denied that he had given 
any challenge ! It would be impossible for 
even a professor of legerdemain to back more 
coolly out of a difficulty. 

A similar letter was sent to ' M. Tol- 
maque, Prestidigitateur,' and he also de- 
clined the encouuter in the same manner. 

These two magicians did not so with their 
enchantments. 

Finally, to cover the whole ground, the 
following letter was written, and, like the 
others, published in the 'Morning Post' 
(Oct. 8, 1864) :— 



London, Oct. 4, 1864. 

< Sir,— The seance which took place in 
your house, and in the presence of yourself 
and friends, last Wednesday evening, has 
given, rise to much discussion, in which we 
have been pronounced by some not only 
jugglers but impostors [say jugglers, and 
therefore impostors]. Two professed con- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 307 

jurors have publicly announced that they 
can produce, by legerdemain, all the phe- 
nomena we have exhibited. We accept the 
challenge, and shall feel obliged if a com- 
mittee of gentlemen of character and posi- 
tion can be found, selected from such as are 
quite free from any prejudice in the matter, 
A seance shall then take place in a room 
which may be examined beforehand, and 
with instruments to be furnished by the 
committee. We are prepared to produce 
there certain phenomena in the presence of 
these gentlemen, and in the presence of the 
two conjurors ; and when we have done, 
the conjurors shall be required to attempt 
to produce the same, under the same condi- 
tions, or shall expose, to the satisfaction of 
the committee, the fraudulent means we are 
stated to have employed: but this they 
shall do by the exercise and exhibition of 
legerdemain (or, if they please, by ma- 
chinery), and not by any occult power of 

x 2 



308 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

the nature of that we possess, and which 
they might use in secret and then repudiate, 
for we do not pretend that we have the 
exclusive possession of the power we 
employ. 

' We trust, sir, in fairness to us and to 
those who believe in our honesty, that the 
test will be fairly and strictly applied, and 
the result, whatever it may be, made 
public. 

' We make this offer in all sincerity and 
good faith, and we hope it will be met and 
dealt with in the same spirit. 

' W T e are, yours truly, 

' Ira Erastus Davenport, 
' William H. Davenport, 
'William M. Fay. 

' To Dion Boucicault, Esq.' 

This fair and open challenge, which has 
simple good faith written in every sentence, 
and which, in the latter portion, shows the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 309 

extent of it in a very curious manner, met 
with no response from the magicians. 

A correspondent of the ' Morning Post ' 
asks of M. Tolmaque, who gave an exhibi- 
tion of tying and untying himself, very 
clever, no doubt, but not at all to the pur- 
pose, — ' Can he, dressed in black, and 
holding powdered chalk or flour in his 
hands, effect both the phenomena of tying 
and untying the ropes, as exhibited by the 
Brothers Davenport, and in the same space 
of time, without dropping any of the flour 
from his hands ? Can he produce visible 
and palpable hands, distinctly and unequivo- 
cally human to outward sight and touch, 
ending at the wrist, without wires or rods 
or human arms connected with them V 
The writer offers to pay any sum he may 
name to any prestidigitateur who can do 
these things, on condition that, failing, he 
will give a quarter of the sum to some 
charity. 



310 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



Professor Anderson, instead of accepting 
any of these offers, challenged the Brothers 
to do their 6 tricks ' in his theatre, in full 
light, instead of darkness ; knowing per- 
fectly well that total darkness in some cases, 
and partial obscurity in others, was usually 
an indispensable condition and, so far as 
can be known, one of the laws of the phe- 
nomena—as much so, perhaps, as in the 
camera obscura. If the things done in the 
absence of light could be done in its 
presence, the cabinet and ropes, sealing- 
wax, flour, straps of diachylon, and all other 
tests might be dispensed with, though it 
may be doubted if people would more 
readily believe. 

M. Tolmaque declined the challenge, on 
the ground that he would have nothing to 
do with works of darkness. 

Mr. Palmer was not quite satisfied with 
the ' backing out ' of the prestidigitateurs. 
He was nettled, perhaps, that a portion of 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 311 

the press persisted in declaring that the 
magicians had solved the problem and ex- 
posed the cheat, when they had refused the 
fairest opportunities to do so, with all the 
glory that would have attended such an 
achievement. Mr. Palmer therefore, on 
the 22nd of October, published the follow- 
ing : — ' If M. Tolmaque or any other per- 
son will, by legerdemain, produce precisely 
the same phenomena as those to which the 
Brothers Davenport give rise, under pre- 
cisely the same conditions, to the satisfaction 
of a majority of the noblemen and gentlemen 
who were present at the seance held last 
Friday evening at the Hanover-square 
Rooms, I will pay £100 to any of the 
dramatic funds that may be selected ; the 
party of course attempting, should he fail, 
to pay a like sum to the same institu- 
tion/ 

The dramatic funds are vainly watching 
and waiting for that hundred pou ds ; but 



312 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



the response of M. Tolmaque is a curiosity. 
He writes (< Morning Star/ Oct. 24) :— 

c I, M. Tolmaque, prestidigitateur, hereby 
inform Mr. Palmer, that as long as he sails 
under false colours I will not answer him, 
or any of his friends, on the subject of the 
Brothers Davenport. 

' M. Tolmaque.' 

And this, I believe, ended the pretences 
of the magicians, who, not being able to do 
so with their enchantments, gave curious 
experiments of their own, and untied knots 
at the music-halls. 

This feat of untying knots is old and 
familiar enough, and is just what the Bro- 
thers Davenport do not do. To prove this 
they allow the ropes to be sealed : to prove 
it they hold both their hands filled with 
flour or other white powder : to prove it 
they have been sewn up in bags, enclosed 
in wooden tubes, and subjected to all the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 313 

tests mentioned in these pages, and a hun- 
dred beside. What they wish to show is 
that they neither untie nor tie themselves, 
and that they do none of the remarkable 
things done in their presence. 

The same power or powers that show the 
hands without arms, or hands and arms 
where no bodies are visible ; which play on 
the instruments; which hurl the guitar 
sounding through the air ; which remove a 
coat from, or put one upon, a man whose 
hands are bound securely together — the 
same power ties and unties the Brothers 
Davenport, when they are placed beyond 
the aid of confederates, and equally pre- 
vented — by the flour test, for example — from 
doing it themselves. 

Mr. Palmer might very safely have offered 
the magicians themselves a thousand, or 
ten thousand, pounds to do one of these 
things by jugglery, under the same con- 
ditions. 



314 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



The tyings and untyings at the theatres 
and music-halls may be ingenious tricks 
enough ; but it is very absurd to compare 
them with what is seen at the seances of the 
Brothers Davenport. 

It should be observed that this conflict 
with the conjurors is not a new thing with 
the Brothers. It began ten years ago, 
when they were but children, and when the 
phenomena were quite as extraordinary as 
they are to-day. They have been watched 
by the cleverest jugglers, who failed to 
discover the semblance of trickery. They 
have everywhere challenged every kind of 
test, and the most searching examinations. 
No magician has ever ventured to accept 
their standing challenge to exhibit the same 
phenomena under the same conditions. 

Observe, also, that the so-called magicians 
never interfere with each other — never 
challenge each other. Each does as well as 
he can, and no one ever attempts to expose 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 315 

another's tricks. They do all they can, 
however, to throw discredit on the Daven- 
ports, not because they can but because 
they cannot do the same or even similar 
things. The London press, while giving 
credit to the skill of Professor Anderson, 
has very frankly declared that his pretended 
imitation or exposure of the Davenports is 
simply absurd. There is not the least 
resemblance. When Professor Anderson's 
coat is taken off his back while his hands are 
securely fastened behind him with cord, or 
tape and sealing-wax, or copper wire, or dia- 
chylon plaister, or by wires passing through 
holes in his thumb and finger-nails, or by 
several of these means in combination, under 
the inspection of a competent and impartial 
committee, he may talk about ' an exhibition 
after the manner of the Brothers Davenport.' 
On this matter the following extract from 
a communication in the Newcastle Chronicle 
(Nov. 7, 1864) is to the purpose. The writer, 



316 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



after describing the favourable impressions 
made upon him by the Brothers and their com- 
panions, so different from what certain of 
the London papers had led him to expect, 
says : — 

C I have only this remark to make. I 
have seen nearly all the greatest conjurors 
of the present day. I have been behind the 
scenes, and assisted in making the necessary 
preparations for a wizard's entertainment. 
I have seen both M. Tolmaque and Mr. Red- 
mond do their rope- trick, and I know how it 
is done. I can honestly declare that what the 
Davenports do as far surpasses Anderson, 
Tolmaque, and Redmond, as these gentle- 
men can surpass such a clumsy amateur as 
I am. I am totally at a loss to account for 
the Davenports' feats by any known principle 
of legerdemain. If what they do is con- 
juring, all I can say about it is, that it is 
the cleverest conjuring I ever saw or heard 
of.' 



'THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 317 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE TESTIMONY OF MR. FERGUSON. 

Six Months with the Brothers Davenport — Seance in a Rail- 
way Tunnel — Convincing Manifestations — Personal 
Explanations. 

The Rev. J. B. Ferguson, late of Xash- 
ville, Tennessee, who has already been 
mentioned as having accompanied the 
Brothers Davenport to England, and who 
has been engaged as director and lecturer, 
so far as explanations are required, at the 
seances given in this country, has, at the 
request of the present writer, given an 
account of his experiences with them in the 
following 

Statement. 
4 On the night of the 26th April 1864, in 



318 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



company with a friend, I attended the 
exhibition of the Brothers Davenport at 
the Cooper Institute, New York. On the 
night succeeding, in company with five of 
my friends from the Southern States, I 
attended another exhibition at the same 
place. I had been for years familiar 
with phenomena and experiences of a similar 
character to those represented as attending 
the Brothers ; and from the knowledge of 
this fact, my Southern friends were anxious 
that I should accompany them. 

'Of the Davenports themselves personally, 
or as representatives of the ' wonders ' asso- 
ciated with their names, I knew nothing. 
Of course I had often seen their names in 
public prints, but my attention to what was 
said either in their favour or to their dis- 
paragement had never been sufficiently at- 
tracted to secure any conviction respecting 
them. Accordingly, on my way to their pro- 
posed entertainment, in reply to a question 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 319 

of iny friends, I remember to have stated that, 
if the Davenports were not jugglers or de- 
ceivers, and were really instruments through 
which man's allied nature to the invisible 
or spiritual world was reflected, we should 
receive evidence such as no candid man 
could refuse to accept. I also expressed a 
hope that one of my friends, who was a 
sceptic in the saddest sense, would receive 
the tangible proof of what he had heard me 
assert and defend for fifteen years. 

' When we came to the place of meeting — 
the large lecture-room of the Cooper Insti- 
tute, the largest in New York city — we 
found some thousands assembled. The 
entertainment — for such it may properly 
be called — opened, and a committee was 
chosen to secure the young men in the 
cabinet and report to the audience what 
occurred. I need not describe the manifesta- 
tions, or their effect on the audience, as the 
New York papers gave graphic reports at 



320 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



the time, and have indulged in tiresome 
repetitions since. It is enough to say that 
I was convinced that the Davenports were 
no jugglers, and that the displays of power 
through them admitted of no explanation 
according to any known estimate of natural 
laws. I called upon the Davenports in 
private, and attended their public enter- 
tainments for eleven days and nights. My 
sceptical friend, after the closest scrutiny, 
admitted that there was no clandestine 
mechanism or arrangement of machinery, 
and no sleight-of-hand in what he had so 
doubtingly and thoroughly examined. He 
is a man of the first eminence at home and 
abroad in discovery, and in the application 
of discovery in the most intricate and diffi- 
cult mechanics, and in mechanical skill has 
few equals. 

4 When the Davenports appeared at Brook? 
lyn, near New York, it happened that their 
representative before the public was absent ; 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 321 

and they, through their friends, invited me 
to introduce them to the public of the city 
of Brooklyn. In that city, at the time, I 
was solicited to meet the representatives of 
a highly respectable religious society, with 
a view to becoming their pastor. I, how- 
ever, consented to introduce the Davenports 
in " the City of Churches." I did this in a 
spirit of candid enquiry and experiment 
respecting a subject which I hoped might 
prove of interest. I did so knowing that, 
however desirable it might be that I should 
become the pastor of the church above men- 
tioned, my action in this matter would put 
an end to all hope of such pastoral charge 
being entrusted to me. I did so because I was 
fully convinced that the phenomena which 
occurred in the presence of the Brothers 
was a part of the supramundane evidence 
given to this age — evidence not to be mea- 
sured by the conventional restrictions of 

Y 



322 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



time and men, however respectable the 
time or however religious the men. 

' When I saw and knew, for myself and 
not by another, that the evidences given 
through the Davenports were true, I ac- 
cepted a proposition to accompany them to 
England and Europe — if, after three or four 
months' experience with them before the 
public, I should find the work such as I 
could perform without detriment to them 
or to myself. Accordingly, I spent three 
months in the interior towns and cities of 
New York State and New England, and a 
month in the chief cities of Canada. Dur- 
ing this time they were brought before 
every class of the communities they visited ; 
every conceivable form of fastening and 
other methods of l test ' and trial were sub- 
mitted to — such as being held by the hands 
and feet while the manifestations of force 
were witnessed, the use of sealing-wax, and 
many other devices — and always with com- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 323 

plete and undeniable success. Indeed, it 
were impossible for me by any use of lan- 
guage too strongly to state this fact. 

1 During this time I resided with them at 
the same hotels, and we often occupied the 
same suite of apartments. I travelled with 
them, in the unavoidable intimacy of tra- 
velling companionship, over thousands of 
miles of the widespread territory referred 
to, and consequently must have had every 
opportunity of detecting fraud, if fraud 
there were to be detected. But it becomes 
me to say that I never detected any, nor 
the appearance of any. When they were, 
to all appearance, sound asleep, some of the 
most marked of the manifestations have 
occurred. In travelling by rail, when 
entering a dark tunnel, I have, to a mental 
wish, received them in tangible and unmis- 
takable forms; and this experience has 
been repeated in England. For example, 
upon our arrival at Liverpool, when we had 



324 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



taken our seats for London, immediately 
upon leaving the former city, amid expres- 
sions indicative of the natural anxiety of 
young Americans in their first observations 
and experiences as strangers in a strange 
land, on entering the tunnel near Liverpool, 
one of our party, I think Mr. Fay, said, " I 
wonder if John came with us over the sea ? " 
The question was instantly answered thus : 
— I was grasped by a strong hand, and so 
was each one of the company. At the same 
time that I was thus grasped, my face and 
hands were gently felt by seemingly human 
hands. I confess the evidence was so 
palpable and satisfactory as to distinctness 
of touch, responding to my wishes, that I 
feared some one of our party was the 
operator. I pleasantly charged them with 
it, when each solemnly protested he was the 
recipient of similar evidences, and had not 
moved, nor even desired to do so. I then 
desired mentally that I should be met by an 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 325 

evidence of such a character that it would 
admit of neither doubt nor denial. As we 
entered another tunnel I changed my posi- 
tion in the railroad carriage, so that no one 
of my party could touch me without my 
knowledge. In response to a mental wish I 
was touched, my face manipulated, and my 
person distinctly handled, when I knew 
positively that no one visible was near me. 
Of the satisfaction given by such an evi- 
dence I need not speak : no words can do 
it justice. I state the fact, and leave it to 
the appreciation of all who have the desire 
for similar evidences. I could give many 
other instances of force guided by invisible 
intelligence. On extinguishing the light in 
my room, I have had my chair instantly 
lifted and placed upon my head, with the 
legs upward, and the cushion resting on the 
top of my head. A voice — not mine, not 
that of anyone present — has directed me to 
feel the position of those present. I did so, 



326 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



while the chair held itself, or was held, 
firmly where it was placed. In distinct 
vocal tones I was invited to be seated, the 
chair being at the same time taken from my 
head and placed properly, that I might 
comply with the invitation. 

' I might record a volume of such and 
similar manifestations. But with respect to 
all these evidences, expressions, or demon- 
strations from the invisible world, I have one 
remark to make ; I wish it to sink deep into 
the minds of my readers. These are not given 
in response to mere curiosity, idle wish, or 
selfish desire. They have come when and 
where they were needed, and where there was 
a degree of good faith in the individual to 
use the evidence for universal good. The 
rule with me is, that whenever and wherever 
the mind is ready for an ascent in actual 
progress, evidences are given that transcend 
all our existing standards of truth and good. 
' For six months I have travelled with the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 327 

Davenports, and in various conditions, 
advantageous and disadvantageous, I have 
witnessed the evidences of the power 
that attends them. I have seen them 
subjected to every form of scrutiny that 
scepticism could devise. I have seen their 
professed friends, with anxiety, caused by a 
bigoted and sensuous denial, return to the 
Davenports with fresh doubts, to be met and 
reassured by evidences that admitted of no 
denial. I can truthfully say that no time, 
place, or condition of the most diverse and 
promiscuous audiences, or the most select 
companies, has ever prevented the manifes- 
tations, though they have been rendered less 
satisfactory in various ways. The anxiety 
caused the Brothers by aimless discussion, 
captious criticism, and obstinate denial is a 
very unfavourable condition. I have seen 
them associated with persons who only 
wished to make gain of their gifts, and 
whose methods of presenting them to the 



328 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



public were calculated only to produce dis- 
trust, and to place the evidences of the 
power attending them on a level with or- 
dinary jugglery. I have seen these persons 
confounded, most unexpectedly to them- 
selves, by the evidences of truth, wisdom, 
and power attending the manifestations: 
Through the most painstaking ordeals, the 
severest scrutiny, the most searching ana- 
lysis these evidences have passed. They 
have ever come forth more clear, more 
satisfactory and convincing to all honest 
enquiry. Many of my own friends, utterly 
unconvinced, and looking upon me with 
profound astonishment that I should be so 
duped as to become insensible to the charms 
of respectability and, I may add, to the 
attraction and use of the 4 almighty dollar/ 
have witnessed these evidences, and have 
either become silent, or have acknowledged 
that no duty could be more sacred than the 
one I have assumed. In the presence of 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 329 

doubt, distrust, and odium, ray own arm 
has at times become weak and my heart 
faint. 

' This state in me has been met by proofs 
of a superior recognition and protection be- 
yond the power of mortals to order or deny. 
Hence I can say, in presence of men and of 
the Great Unseen though not Unknown 
Power who governs all human action, that 
these evidences are all and much more than 
is claimed for them by those through whose 
agency they are brought before the mind. 
These evidences are entirely above and be- 
yond the capacity of those through whom or 
by whom they are given, physically, intellec- 
tually, and morally. True, the mental 
capacity of the Messrs. Davenport is fully 
equal to, if not above, the average of their 
countrymen, or men' of their age and op- 
portunities. Physically, they are sound, 
healthy, active men. Morally, I know them 
to be honest candid men, with manly, 



330 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



moral courage, decision of character, per- 
severance, and self-reliance under difficulties 
and dangers that would have appalled many 
who have presumed to disparage them with- 
out knowledge of their character, or from 
inability to account for these wondrous 
manifestations. I feel it a duty I owe to 
truth to say, that I know these men as well 
as men usually know each other. I know 
also that it is thought that persons who 
are made the instruments of such or kindred 
manifestations are liable, more than others, 
to disease of both body and mind, and it is 
often more than hinted that their morality 
is far beneath the common standard. This 
is not true of the Davenports. And when 
it is considered that for three years they 
gave free exhibitions, and for over seven 
years they have made these exhibitions the 
business of their lives, and are to-day men 
of clear heads and sound healthy bodies, 
we are forced to the conclusion that the 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 331 

manifestations through them are perfectly 
consistent with the laws or conditions of 
mind, physical organization, or true moral 
responsibility. Indeed, in a somewhat 
varied field of observation upon men and 
manners, I know of no men of like age and 
opportunities who are their equals, certainly 
none their superiors, in all that tends to 
sound judgment, perseverance in the path 
of duty, or capacity to meet the diverse 
fortune or serious responsibilities of life. 

' Such manifestations are not confined to 
these persons ; I meet them in degrees 
everywhere. I have had similar experi- 
ences and demonstrations in my own per- 
son for years. I have met them in others 
in the most calm and serious periods of my 
somewhat eventful life. I am sure that no 
man can give to them an honest and un- 
biassed attention without being satisfied 
that they transcend our existing estimates 



332 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



alike of benevolent purposes and of material 
law. 

'I have no reason to doubt that persons 
through whom supramundane manifesta- 
tions have been given have mingled trickery 
and fraud with what was really above them. 
Human nature is frail. Curiosity on the 
part of the public, and an eager desire for 
notoriety on the part of those who are for 
the time being ministers to this exacting 
curiosity, have been too powerful tempta- 
tions to the weak and foolish. It has of 
course been said that the Davenports have 
descended to tricks. I can only speak for 
the time I have known them. Since my 
connection with them I know that they have 
not so descended, nor needed to descend. 
It is to the fact of entire sincerity that I 
attribute their untarnished success in the 
New World and in London and England. 
They are mortal, and subject to temptation, 
like all of us ; but as regards these evidences 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 333 

they can have no inducement to fraud any 
more than a man with a million of pounds 
has occasion to steal. They need not to 
invent tricks when genuine phenomena con- 
stantly attend them. Whenever they have 
sat for the manifestations they have been 
presented in such form as to be convincing. 
There is only one exception to this state- 
ment in England, and that occurred at the 
meeting of the representatives of the press, 
(October 25, 1864), in London. Even 
then evidence was given in one form though 
withheld in another. There were dictation 
and interruption on that occasion which 
proved sufficient to derange the conditions 
of manifestation partially. But on that 
very evening I witnessed manifestations, in 
the presence of the Davenports and Mr. 
Fay, after the Press seance, and elsewhere, 
transcending all I had seen during my con • 
nection with the Brothers. Lessons of 
wisdom on all that had transpired were 



334 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



given in an audible voice, and much was an- 
ticipated, for them and for myself, that no 
mortal vision could then descry. 

The evidences of intelligence, of wisdom, 
of prophetic information and warning, of 
insight as to events that are as yet to occur, 
and which always do occur when thus fore- 
told — the protection and guidance and care 
unfailing attending the mission of these 
men and all who are connected intimately 
with it are to me equally powerful and 
convincing evidences as the manifestations 
of force or power. 1 do not undervalue 
those evidences of power that shock the ma- 
terialist into belief. I know what immor- 
tality is worth as a motive to man in pro- 
ducing a living hope, and I know that these 
evidences are evidences of hope to all — yes, 
one mighty all — despite all the denials, vain 
efforts at explanation, and seeming misap- 
plication that a diversified appreciation and 
culture mav make of them. I know they 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 335 

are true, and will outlive all our standards 
of adaptation and application. I know they 
reveal the Godlike in man. I know they 
are the culmination of the movements of all 
the nations, tribes, and peoples of a common 
humanity. I know they reveal a unity in 
all human diversity. They will go on in in- 
creasing power, as our age and time shall 
unfold to receive them. They will stay the 
desolating hand of selfish and sectarian ani- 
mosity. They will lay low the vain con- 
ceptions of those who seek not beyond the 
gratification of personal desire and self-ag- 
grandizement. They will assure us that God 
lives in all : and as spirit is above form, 
right above wrong, so will they rise above the 
murky mire and the clodded earth, which 
too often weigh us down beneath all that 
would adorn and beautify man as one and 
undivided in the Spirit that gives him life 
and destiny. However faint the scintilla- 
tions, they come as the sparkling gems of 



336 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

thought divine to illumine the midnight of 
human erring: and they make us know 
that there is no hour so auspicious with 
hope, no day so bright, no achievement so 
good but that its equal will come to each, 
and bring the conscious reflection that 
through the deepest penury and want, and 
the most trying scenes of human care and 
responsibility, we are ever ascending, under 
the mighty hand of progress, that spans all 
time, to a good no language can either 
express or measure, under the benign re- 
flection of the evidences of a hope to man 
universal, which are so signally marking 
our age or time. I present, dear Sir, to 
you this my honest and unwavering testi- 
mony to the nature and character of the 
manifestations that ever attend these de- 
servedly-celebrated young Americans. 

' J. B. Ferguson, 
' Of Nashville, Tennessee.' 



THE BEOTHEES DAVENPOET. 661 

The peculiar relation of the writer of the 
above statement to the Brothers Davenport 
gives him a right to speak warmly in their 
behalf, and the zeal and enthusiasm with 
which he engages in their work, and his 
ideas of its importance and consequences, 
are evident. Those ideas are his own, and 
for them he is alone responsible, 



338 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



MORE FACTS AND EVIDENCE. 

Mr. Coleman's Statement — He talks with l John King? and 
sees Divers Marvels — Astounding Phenomena — Mr. 
Howitfs Testimony — Facts and Tests — Genius and 
Science nonplussed. 

Mr. Benjamin Coleman, of No. 51 Pem- 
bridge Villas, Bayswater, a gentleman well 
known upon the London Stock Exchange, 
and who has been a careful observer of 
extra-natural phenomena in both hemis- 
pheres, has prepared an account of his 
observations at several public and private 
seances of the Brothers Davenport, from 
which I have been permitted to select the 
following facts, not contained in the previous 
chapters, or more circumstantially related. 
Of the Brothers Davenport, Mr. Coleman 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 339 

says : c Under ordinary circumstances, it 
would have been a sufficient guarantee of 
the respectability of the Davenports, that 
they were associated with a gentleman of 
the high character and intellectual acquire- 
ments of Mr. J. B. Ferguson, whose past 
history and great sacrifices for the cause of 
truth is well known to me.' 

While in America, Mr. Coleman was 
assured by Professor Mapes, an eminent 
chemist and engineer, that ' John King ' had 
conversed with him in an audible voice for 
half an hour, and had given his hand a most 
powerful grasp. ' I am now enabled,' says 
Mr. Coleman, ' to corroborate this extraor- 
dinary fact, for I, too, have conversed with 
" John King." ' It was at a private seance, 
at which were present only the Brothers 
Davenport, Mr. Ferguson, and Mr. Coleman. 
He says : ' The lights being extinguished 
we sat a short time in silence, when a start- 
ling bang was made upon the tambourine, 

i 

% 2 



340 



A BIOGEAPHY OF 



which instrument, with the guitar, were 
instantly placed upon my knees. A hand 
gently caressed me on the head, and a stream 
of phosphoric light passed across the spacious 
room, which was succeeded by another rising 
from the floor to the ceiling. A voice then 
spoke to me through a trumpet which was 
brought within a few inches of my face ; and 
in a clear, distinct and sonorous voice, I was 
thus addressed : — 

c " How are you, Coleman ? " 
.' "Oh ! " exclaimed both of the Davenports, 
" that's i John' — that's ' John/ — we have not 
heard him speak for a long time. Keep him 
in conversation, Mr. Coleman." 

4 I then said, " You appear to know me, 
John." 

4 " Yes ; I knov/ you in spirit." 
4 " Have you ever seen me before ? " 
4 " Yes ; I saw you in America." 
'" Do you think, John, that you will be able 
to convince the sceptics in this country ? " 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 341 

4 " Yes ; we have power enough to make 
them surrender. There is a lady standing 
by your side." 

1 " What is her name ? " 

< " Kate." 

* At this moment one of the Davenports 
said, " I hope you will be with us to-morrow 
night, John (the night of the press seance)." 

1 " Certainly, certainly ! " — then turning 
in an opposite direction, as I could easily 
detect by the sound, the voice said, " How 
are you, Ferguson ? " ' 

After a few words more, the voice turned 
again to Mr. Coleman, a hand passed over 
his head, and patted him kindly on the 
shoulder, and the voice said, ' I must go 
now ; good night.' 

' Sceptics may save themselves the trouble,' 
says Mr. Coleman, ' of suggesting illusion, 
ventriloquism, &c. I know it was a reality. 
I am sure that a voice addressed me, and 
that it was not the voice of a mortal.' 



342 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

' At a stance at the house of a friend, the 
coat of Mr. Fay was removed from his back 
in an instant, and my friend's coat put upon 
him in the same space of time, Mr. Fay's 
hands being firmly tied together behind 
him, and the knots of the cord sealed. On 
the same occasion, the still more bewildering 
fact occurred of Mr. Ira Davenport's waist- 
coat being removed while his coat remained, 
his hands being bound behind his back. 
The waistcoat lay at our feet, with his 
watch in the pocket and the chain hooked 
in the button-hole, just as he had worn it a 
moment previously, the waistcoat remaining 
buttoned.' 

Mr. Coleman confesses himself staggered 
by this phenomenon. It must be a trick. 
But how could it be done in an instant, and 
with the hands tied and the seals unbroken ? 
He says : 

4 On a subsequent occasion I saw the 
same phenomenon when the wrists were 



THE BROTHEKS DAVENPORT. 343 

secured with soft copper wire, in addition to 
the rope, which made it impossible to slip 
the hands, and for more perfect security, at 
other times, when the natural hands would 
have been required to play on musical in- 
struments, &c., sticking-plaister was put 
around the hands, which were also filled 
with flour. 

' I saw at another seance Mr. Fay tied to 
his chair, with his hands fastened behind 
his back, and after several coils with inter- 
mediate knots around his person, Captain 
Dray son of the Royal Observatory at Wool- 
wich fastened the final knot beneath the seat 
of the chair, and placed a legible seal in wax 
on this final knot, which of course embraced 
the two cords of the rope. After the usual 
manifestations, Mr. Fay requested the in- 
visible operators to untie him and leave, if 
they could, the seal unbroken, We heard 
the untying of the rope, and in a minute or 
two Mr. Fay was set at liberty, when, to 



344 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



our amazement, the first knot remained with 
the seal intact) every intermediate knot was 
taken out, leaving a plain knotless rope with 
a loop at the end. This remarkable fact 
was made evident to all present, numbering 
some thirty or forty persons, who eagerly 
examined the rope and were obliged to ac- 
cept the palpable fact, inexplicable as it 
appears to be. 

i On another evening, the lights being 
extinguished, Sir Henry de Hoghton asked 
that Mr. Fay's coat should be taken off. He 
had scarcely uttered the words when Mr. 
Ferguson struck a brilliant light, and / saw 
the coat leaving the body of Mr. Fay, and all 
could see it in its flight in the air, until it 
reached and rested on the knees of Sir Henry, 
who was sitting in the centre of a large semi- 
circle some ten or fifteen feet from either Mr. 
Fay or Mr. Ira Davenport, who were both tied 
hands and feet to their chairs. Sir Henry 
de Hoghton then took off his own coat, and 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 345 

placing it on his knee asked that it should 
be put upon Mr. Fay. We instantly heard 
a rushing sound, and in less time than it 
takes me to say it — in fact not more than a 
second or two — Sir Henry's coat was found 
not on Mr. Fay, but on Mr. Davenport, over 
his own coat, which had not been removed. 
' Let the incredulous smile and the savans 
shake their heads; these astounding facts 
remain and are unimpeachable. 

' Benja. Coleman. 

' London, 51 Pembridge Villas, 
1 Bayswater.' 

A very remarkable statement, which, 
standing alone, would go far to send a man 
to a lunatic asylum, but which is supported 
by such abundant testimony, and is suscept- 
ible of such easy proof, that a less solid and 
reputable man might make it with safety. 

But let the reader consider a moment one 
or two of these facts. Can he conceive of a 



346 A BIOGEAPHY OF 

man's waistcoat being taken all buttoned 
from his body, without removing his coat, 
and while his hands are bound together 
behind him ? Can he conceive of a dozen 
well-tied knots in a doubled rope being 
untied, while the last knot that secured all 
the others remains intact with its seal 
unbroken ? 

Mr. William Howitt, the well-known and 
delightful author of so many thoroughly 
English books, has published a statement 
respecting the Brothers Davenport, from 
which I am able to make only brief extracts. 
Mr. Howitt says: — 

i Having been familiar with the career of 
the Davenports in America for the last ten 
years, in fact, ever since they were boys — 
having read the testimonies of the most re- 
spectable American journals, and knowing 
that thousands of the acutest and most 
honest of the distinguished men of America 
had satisfied themselves of the bona fide 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 347 

nature of their manifestations, I did not 
even require to see them myself to be quite 
certain that they were genuine. I knew 
that every ingenuity, every test which a 
most wide-awake and ingenious people 
could apply, had been applied in their case. 
I knew that they had gone, through all these 
years, over the length and breadth of the 
North American continent, through all 
that rowdyism, vulgarism, learned igno- 
rance, journalistic conceit, lying, menace 
and browbeating violence could do and 
show.' 

Mr. Howitt says that he saw these mani- 
festations at the Hanover Square Kooms, 
and was satisfied of their genuineness, and, 
with his usual frankness and independence, 
he did not hesitate to declare his convic- 
tions. 

To give a full account of all the remark- 
able phenomena that have occurred in this 
metropolis alone, during the brief stay of 



348 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



the Brothers Davenport, would require a 
volume. At one seance in a private mansion, 
one of the instruments, whirling through 
the air, knocked a large and costly vase 
from the mantel-piece. It was heard to fall 
upon the fender with a crash and shiver, as 
if it had been dashed into fragments. No 
one doubted that such was the case until a 
light was struck, and it was found standing 
upon the hearth, whole and uninjured. 

The tests which have been applied have 
been almost as remarkable as the phenomena 
produced. At a seance at the residence of 
a distinguished man of letters, a clergyman 
twice broke the circle and rushed into the 
centre of the room, expecting to find either 
the Davenports untied or to detect their 
confederates. In each case he found them 
both firmly bound in their chairs, and no 
other person. 

These facts are very well known to almost 
all the writers of the London press. They 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 349 

would be confirmed personally by nine out 
of ten of the writers for the most respectable 
journals. The time will probably come 
when they will be willing to publish to the 
world their genuine convictions. It is re- 
markable that even those who have honestly 
and frankly stated the facts have offered no 
theory to explain them. No mechanician, 
no adept in legerdemain, no man of science, 
has attempted to show how one of these 
marvels has been accomplished. A score or 
two of the very cleverest men of England, 
some of whose names have been given, have 
had the best possible opportunities to in- 
vestigate the whole matter. Had there been 
fraud, deception, or delusion of any kind, 
they could not have failed to detect it. 



350 A BIOGRAPHY OF 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

WHO, AND WHY ? 

By whom are the Manifestations Produced, and for What 
Purpose ? Examination of Evidence — Conclusion. 

When any person has become convinced by- 
testimony which he cannot doubt, or, if that 
be not sufficient, by the evidence of his own 
senses, that the phenomena described in 
these pages are real, actual, unquestionable 
facts, the next thing in order is to ask 
how, or rather by whom, are they produced ? 
If the Brothers Davenport, as they solemnly 
aver, have no direct and voluntary agency 
in producing the manifestations, and there 
is no collusion, no deception, no jugglery or 
fraud about them, by what or by whom are 
they accomplished ? 

Are they the result of some subtle ele- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 351 

merit, like magnetism and electricity ? Most 
certainly not. These natural forces act 
according to certain laws, and do not pos- 
sess intelligence. Electricity may rend 
trees and rocks, produce light and heat, 
propel machinery or convey messages, but 
for these last operations it requires to be 
guided by some intelligence out of itself. 
Electricity or galvanism will not tie or 
untie ropes, nor play on musical instru- 
ments, nor take off or put on the coats of 
persons whose hands are securely tied to- 
gether, much less hold conversations and 
communicate information. 

What we see exhibited at every stage of 
this history, and in all the phenomena, is 
force, governed by intelligence. We cannot 
conceive of an active intelligence, or an 
intelligent force or power, except as an 
individualised being, in some respects like 
ourselves. In all tljese manifestations there 
are evidences of the actions, and conse- 



352 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

quently of the existence, of intelligent 
beings, having some faculties similar to our 
own, usually invisible, but with the power 
of taking on, under certain conditions, a 
partial visibility. Hands and arms are 
often seen — perhaps oftener felt unseen, 
and not seldom both seen and felt. Some- 
times, but rarely, larger portions of forms, 
very human in their appearance, are visible. 
' These hands, arms, portions of bodies, seem 
to be formed in space out of no visible ma- 
terial; but visibility, it must be remem- 
bered, is only an accident of matter, not an 
essential property. They also melt away, 
sometimes to the sight, often to the feeling, 
into invisibility and intangibility. 

Men have at different times and in diffe- 
rent countries believed in the existence of 
many kinds of beings having these pro- 
perties of intelligence, force, and of being 
visible or invisible at will, or according 
to varying conditions. The belief in the 



: 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 353 

gods and demi-gods of the old mytho- 
logies of India, Egypt, Greece, and Scan- 
dinavia, was once common, if not uni- 
versal. So has been the belief in fairies, 
brownies, the ' good people,' spirits, gob- 
lins ; also in angels and demons ; good and 
bad spirits of a high order of intelligence; 
and it has been only in very recent times 
that many persons have doubted of the con- 
tinued existence of human beings, and that 
they sometimes appeared, after being sepa- 
rated from the body, or in some way made 
their presence known to the living. 

Now, it must be admitted by those who 
have attended the seances of the Brothers 
Davenport, that very wonderful and very 
astounding manifestations do take place. 

It must be admitted that the Brothers 
Davenport do not produce them ; and also 
that no living men, by trick or skill, can or 
do produce them. 

We cannot conceive of any blind force in 

A A 



354 



A BIOGKAPHY OF 



nature producing manifestations of intelli- 
gence, or speaking, playing on musical in- 
struments, and exercising mechanical inge- 
nuity — in some cases in defiance of the com- 
mon laws of nature. 

We are forced to the conviction that 
these things are the work of intelligent 
beings ; and it is also certain that they are 
usually intangible, invisible, and not subject 
to material laws, and that they can exercise 
powers over matter, of which we can form 
no distinct conception. 

The next question is — who, or of what 
nature, are these beings ? 

The character of the manifestations is not 
such as to indicate that they are the work 
of a high or superior order of intelligences. 
We cannot suppose, for example, that an- 
gels would be engaged in producing such 
phenomena. 

We cannot reasonably attribute them to 
a high order of wicked spirits. There are 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 355 

no evidences of transcendent intelligence 
joined to transcendent malice. They are 
sometimes called diablerie ; but I see no 
evidence, so far as the Davenports are con- 
cerned, of such demoniac complicity. 

The only real clue or positive testimony 
we have, as to the beings who produce the 
phenomena described, is the declarations of 
the beings themselves. They are the only 
witnesses we can examine : theirs is the only 
testimony we can take. 

Their testimony is that they are human 
beings like ourselves. They do not say that 
they are better than we are, or wiser. They 
say that, by the fact of no longer having 
bodies composed of the grosser forms of 
matter, they have certain advantages over 
us in respect to sight, locomotion, &c. In 
many cases they declare their identity with 
persons who have lived upon the earth, and 
they convince many persons of this identity. 

The Brothers Davenport, from the be- 

A A 2 



356 A BIOGKAPHY OF 

ginning'of their remarkable experience, have 
had, by various means, communications from 
the intelligences which produce the mani- 
festations. They are as familiar with an 
audible voice which speaks to them as with 
the phenomena commonly witnessed. They 
have a familiar acquaintance with two or 
three of these intelligences, who profess to 
be human beings in a different stage of 
existence. These voices, and these verbal 
communications, have been heard by many 
persons besides themselves, and by some in 
this country. 

I give these facts, as they have been sub- 
stantially given elsewhere in the course of 
the narrative, that all the important facts 
may be placed before the reader. 

This being the testimony of the very 
powers or forces which claim to produce the 
phenomena, we are to decide whether they, 
speaking of themselves, are worthy of belief. 
So far as I know, their testimony is unim- 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 357 

peached. There is no witness to the contrary. 
There is no other hypothesis even which will 
bear examination. If the operations per- 
formed are those of intelligent beings, and 
those beings are not what they declare 
themselves to be, what are they ? 

I am. not putting forward a hypothesis, 
but simply recording the testimony or 
explanation given by the manifesting power, 
as one of the facts of the manifestations. 
It is no theory of the Brothers Davenport. 
They do not advance any. But they afford 
in some way, not clearly known to physiolo- 
gists and psychologists, the means — some 
aromal element, perhaps, or nerve aura of a 
peculiar character — by which the manifesta- 
tions are made ; and one of those manifesta- 
tions is the declaration, true or false, that 
they are made by human beings in another 
state of existence. 

To this statement it is objected by certain 
theologians, that men, when they leave the 



358 



A BIOGRAPHY OF 



body, go at once either to a place they would 
not leave for such a purpose, or to a place 
they could not. To this, it may be replied, 
that other theologians recognise the existence 
of intermediate conditions, and of future 
states, as various as men's characters and 
actions. 

Another objection is, that the manifesta- 
tions are trifling, coarse, vulgar, and not in 
accordance with our views of the nature 
and conditions of men in another state of 
being. To this, it may be replied, that we 
know very little of that state, and that as 
men differ very greatly in culture and tastes 
in this world, we do not know that they 
suddenly change their natures, or become 
wise, dignified, and good, by getting rid of 
their bodies. Reasoning of the other life 
from this, we should expect changes to be 
gradual, and not rapid. Growth and pro- 
gression appear to be the law of the universe, 
as regard both matter and mind. 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 359 

As to the manifestations, they are cer- 
tainly very human, or they would not 
attract so wide and deep a human interest ; 
and, a priori, one would say they were more 
likely to be produced by human beings 
than by any others we know of; and if it 
can be shown that they are not produced 
by human beings in the body, it is not a 
very unreasonable supposition that they 
may be produced by the same sort of beings 
out of the body. 

When we come to this point, and possibly 
before, we are met with that wonderful 
question, Cui bono ? It looks very wise in 
Latin, and is pertinent enough in English. 
What is the object, and what can be the 
benefit of these manifestations ? 

If they were only facts in physical 
science, and had no other significance, they 
would be of greater interest than any facts 
of recent observation. 



360 



THE BROTHERS DAVENPORT. 



If they are ever so coarse manifestations 
of the existence of intelligences, ordinarily 
hidden from our senses, their use in over- 
throwing a coarser materialism is evident : 
if they give us palpable evidence of the 
existence of a universe of which we were in 
doubt, and of a life in the future, in which 
millions have no faith whatever, they are 
not useless. 

These and similar manifestations seem to 
me to be rude and elementary lessons, 
adapted to ignorance and false science 
worse than ignorance; the first steps to 
the recognition of a higher life. 



THE END. 



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